- The Dirk Nowitzki appreciation thread -

[rikhardur]

When Dirk Nowitzki goes silent, Dallas Mavericks are in trouble

Rules are essential for professional sports teams and the Mavericks need a new one that prohibits Dirk Nowitzki from going 12 minutes without taking a shot.

When that happened Monday in the fourth quarter at Utah, it sent the Mavericks into a fatal stall.

Nowitzki had made 7-of-9 shots in the third quarter, scoring 14 points and putting the Mavericks in position to win -- trailing 77-76.

Then? Nothing.

Whether it was a failure on coach Rick Carlisle's part to get Nowitzki the ball on the plays that he'd been destroying the Jazz on earlier or a reluctance on Nowitzki's part to demand the ball, or a problem from the point guards in executing the plays, it ended any chance the Mavericks had at beating Utah.

Remember, this is a player who had 10 and 29 points in the fourth quarters of two previous games against Utah this season. Now, he's made no fourth-quarter baskets in two of the three games during this losing streak.

It won't happen again, Nowitzki vows.

"The other day against Portland, at least I had my chances in the fourth, and I probably should have won it by myself," he said. "So at least I got the ball in the fourth. I take it all on me always. If I don't get the ball, [I just have to] run to it and make something happen."

But isn't having to win it "by myself" part of the problem?

"If that's what I got to do, that's what I got to do," he said.

The Mavericks have reached a nadir, they hope. Three losses in a row for the first time this season have left them searching for answers.

However, they are not in panic mode. There are 34 games left and that's plenty of time to regain some swagger. In the short term, they have four games remaining before the All-Star break and need to reverse the negative momentum before the break.

But none of that will happen the way they've been playing lately, Carlisle said.

"When you're losing, there aren't a lot of fun things to talk about," he said. "The only way you get out of it is to fight your way out of it. We got to bust out of this.

"There's such a fine line. When you're on a streak like this, you can look at all the negative things, and it can feel like you'll never get out of this. On the other hand, a lot of times you're a lot closer than you think. We've just got to do a few things better more consistently, and we'll get out of it. But not without fighting."

The last time the Mavs were in a tailspin like this, they were 2-7 at the beginning of last season. The only way they broke out of it was to gut out an overtime win at New York, which turned around their fortunes.

With Golden State coming in tonight, it won't be easy to snap their skid. The Warriors specialize in exploiting matchups and trying to win with athleticism and a fast tempo. None of those things are strengths for the Mavericks right now.

"It's been a long time since we lost three in a row, so you can imagine how we feel," Jason Terry said. "It's a testing point for us. There are going to be times like this in a long season when you aren't playing well. These guys have been in tough battles before. This ain't the end of the world. We don't like this feeling, but we'll snap out of it."

http://dirk-nowitzki-news.newslib.com/story/2465-3236651/

[rikhardur]

True to All-Star nature, Dirk Nowitzki's quiet with 22 points

ARLINGTON – As great a scorer as he has been, surpassing the 20,000-point mark in the NBA earlier this season, Dirk Nowitzki has never totally fit into the All-Star scene.

He's not really selfish enough, and his game isn't highlight-worthy enough. Heck, when he was the last of 10 starters introduced, rising from the floor of Cowboys Stadium, he didn't even attempt to match the East's big men, Kevin Garnett and Dwight Howard, in the dance competition.

With a little help from former Mavs teammate Steve Nash, Nowitzki opened the scoring and produced a career-best 22 All-Star Game points, so it wasn't as if the local favorite had a bad night.

But NBA All-Star Games being what they are, or at least what they have become over the last 20 years, the real individual stars of the night were LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Shakira and Alicia Keys.

Not necessarily in that order.

The East won, 141-139, when the West's Carmelo Anthony came up short on a 3-point try just before the buzzer.

The stadium, of course, was the biggest winner as it can now claim the largest crowd (108,713) to watch a basketball game along with the NFL's biggest regular-season gathering (105,121) in last season's Sunday night opener against the New York Giants.

"I've never been in a gym this big," Nowitzki said. "Just needed to win at the end to top the whole thing off. But other than that, just an amazing weekend."

NBA commissioner David Stern was probably just being a good tourist Saturday night when he called North Texas "the basketball capital of the world."

But along with Nowitzki, there was Utah's Deron Williams of The Colony throwing down one of the West's best dunks of the night. There was Toronto's Chris Bosh, a former state champion with Lincoln, coming up huge for the East with 23 points, including the two free throws that were the game's final points.

The NBA is the first pro sport to bring two All-Star games to the Dallas-Fort Worth area with Reunion Arena having hosted one in 1986. Texas Stadium's Pro Bowl, the Ballpark's All-Star Game and American Airlines Center's NHL All-Star Game were all decidedly less memorable or record-setting than Sunday night's event.

While Wade and James and Howard delivered monster dunks and Bosh even had a nice dunk follow over Nowitzki, the highlight for Dirk was probably a give-and-go (more like a give-and-give-and-give-and- go) with his occasional German team counterpart, Chris Kaman of the Clippers.

"For Dirk, it's never about Dirk," Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said. "It's for everybody to enjoy the moment and really just deferring to everybody to have fun."

Nowitzki was a much bigger factor than 10-time All-Star Jason Kidd. A late addition when Kobe Bryant couldn't go, Kidd played only six minutes and was the only All-Star for either side not to score.

Cuban and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones shared the stage – and, naturally, the world's largest big screen – after the third quarter as fans watched Cuban read off the attendance total as if it were a winning lottery number.

But for much of the night, the record crowd showed just how quiet 100,000 people can be. Let's face it, once the NBA All-Star Game actually starts, the show is all but put on hold except for the occasionally spectacular dunk.

The singers, the player introductions, the sightings of celebrities at courtside – all the things that serve as sideshows at Super Bowls or other major sporting events where the winning team truly matters – serve as the main course at this game.

Spike Lee, Floyd Mayweather, Ludacris, P. Diddy – and let's throw in Bill Russell at center – were just as big as the starting five for either team to many of those in attendance.

Much like the Giants game five months ago, when a sports-obsessed nation saw that even in a sluggish economy more than 100,000 fans could pay their way to a big game here, Sunday's contest served notice that the party hasn't stopped.

And just in case Nowitzki had forgotten about losing the spotlight to a certain Miami Heat player in a much more meaningful series four years ago, Wade was named the game's most valuable player after scoring 28 points to go with 11 assists and six rebounds.

Even on a night made for shattering records, Wade's ability to torment the local team remained one constant.

http://dirk-nowitzki-news.newslib.com/story/2465-3236665/

/me bows to Dirk Nowitzki.

[demonyito]

Dirk is tough. a real tough athlete playing with broken heart.

[rikhardur]

Jamal Crawford: Nowitzki an “Unstoppable Force”

Before the Atlanta Hawks win over the Dallas Mavericks Friday night, Atlanta Hawk’s dynamic guard Jamal Crawford was asked to give a scouting report on Dirk Nowitzki.

“With Dirk Nowitzki, It blows you away how tall he is. he’s 7-feet if you look at a guy like Larry Bird, who was a great great shooter. he’s 6-9, 6-10 but this guy is seven feet.”

“And (Nowitzki) shoots it like a guard, he shoots it better than most guards.” said Crawford. “He’s really an unstoppable force. Because He’s shooting it from way up here at 7-feet.”

But that’s not all. Not only is Dirk a legit, sweet shooting seven footer, but he’s generally a lot more mobile than the players at his position.

“He’s playing against guys that are pretty much a lot slower than he is.” says Crawford.

The combination of those traits, makes Nowitzki a unique and dangerous weapon.

“He’s so crafty he does it night in and night out against double teams against triple teams.”

“The whole defense is designed to stop him, but his stroke is so pure. It’s fun to watch. I’ve never seen anything like it; to be so tall and shoot like that.”

“I think he has the best stroke ever for a seven footer.”

http://www.interbasket.net/news/2010/02/27/jamal-crawford-nowitzki-an-unstoppable-force/

[pohani komarac]

As time goes I become more and more Dirk fan. Hi is only with normal behavior along with Duncan and Nash among the superstars. When I see Melo, Queen, Kobe or Wade I always get fealing if they would take shit that they would shrink to half of their size

[rikhardur]

Last night against the Hornets: 36 pts + 8 rebs + 7 assists. Mavs won.

[trunky]

Dirk ist the best and he is getting better and better.

[rikhardur]

It was just his second career triple-double:

[rikhardur]

Almost perfect game for Dirk in game 1 against the Spurs: 36 points (12/14 FG, 12/12 FT) + 7 rebounds.

[rikhardur]

Clock is ticking for Dirk Nowitzki

Tick, tick, tick. Dirk Nowitzki hears it again.

It's his biological NBA Championship clock. The one that came agonizingly close to chiming in 2006, but inexplicably malfunctioned.

Each April it ticks more loudly. Nowitzki is two months from his 32nd birthday. Sunday night he will play the 98th playoff game of an illustrious 11-year Mavericks career that has but one void. For Nowitzki, any finish short of an NBA title is worthless.

"It's going to be another disappointing season for me if we don't win it," Nowitzki said Friday. "That's how I look at it. Losing in the first round, second round or third round, doesn't matter.

"If you don't win it all, that's another lost opportunity. Another year of my prime gone. So we've just got to go for it, get everybody on the same page and see what happens."

As Nowitzki spoke to reporters, someone piped Foreigner's 1981 hit, Urgent, into the Mavericks' practice court sound system.

The song's actually about a woman, but the intended message was clear.

Not that Nowitzki needs reminding.

And for the fourth time in eight years and the second consecutive season, the rival San Antonio Spurs stand in Nowitzki's playoff path.

"Yeah, it's been a fun rivalry," he said. "Obviously, they've got four rings. We don't. We'd love to have one of those. Other than that, I think we've had some great battles over the years."

This season Nowitzki averaged 25 points, surpassed 20,000 career points and served as unofficial player host of the NBA All-Star Game played before 108,713 fans at Cowboys Stadium.

But for Nowitzki, the most momentous part of that All-Star weekend was the Feb. 13 trade that brought Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood and DeShawn Stevenson from Washington to Dallas.

The Mavericks were 32-20 at the time, seemingly headed for a low Western Conference playoff seed and early exit. Owner Mark Cuban admitted that he sat 30 minutes in his shower, contemplating whether to blow up the roster, except for Nowitzki.

"Losing a lot of games during January was ugly," Nowitzki said. "It definitely was a tough month. Maybe we would have picked it up. Who knows? But the trade definitely perked things up for us."

Nowitzki repeated his recent assertions that this is the deepest Mavericks team he's played on, but also the best West playoff field he has seen.

The scenario is both exciting and daunting, which is all Nowitzki can ask this time of year, especially at this stage of his career.

"We've got a lot of weapons," Nowitzki said. "We've got length. We've got physical guys. We've got guys who can make shots.

"What makes it fun is going out there knowing we can compete with anybody. We definitely don't have to shy away from anybody. The feeling that you can walk into buildings and win everywhere is a good feeling.

"But it's also a fine line. We've shown that if we don't play defense consistently, we can lose to anybody."

Pop's quiz

Dirk Nowitzki has noticed one major difference in the way the San Antonio Spurs have guarded him this season.

No Bruce Bowen, who has left the NBA a safer place with his retirement.

He's not around "to trip people," Nowitzki said Friday. And that means the Spurs' defense is different now, but not necessarily any easier.

"[Coach Gregg] Popovich comes up with a lot of schemes," Nowitzki said. "I've seen it all the last couple years. Last year, anywhere I caught the ball on the 3-point line, they were double-teaming me, so I'm sure he'll look at some schemes again this year."

Briefly

Dwane Casey's name already has popped up in head coach speculation coming out of Philadelphia and for the Los Angeles Clippers job. The Mavericks assistant said nothing serious is happening and his sole focus is on preparing for the Spurs series.

The Mavericks had a two-hour workout Friday and will shorten the length of court time today while honing in on the game plan for the Spurs.

Eddie Sefko contributed to this report.

http://dirk-nowitzki-news.newslib.com/story/2465-3236694/

Dirk's honesty is striking.

[mvblair]

Here's another article about Dirk this year in the Playoffs. It's a little dramatic. I cut a lot out, but it's a nice read:

Nowitzki, Mavericks look loaded for bear - by Johnny Ludden, April 19, 2010, Yahoo! Sports

DALLAS – Dirk Nowitzki snarled and flung his arms up, pushing himself from Matt Bonner, a show of toughness that sent the American Airlines Center into a delirious roar. Nowitzki bared his teeth and barked some more, and, no, this was not an act born of frustration. This looked like contempt.

This is who you send to stop me, Nowitzki seemed to be demanding. Is this all you have? All these years, all these battles, and, still, you haven’t learned?

Never does Nowitzki look so ferocious as while he’s chewing through the San Antonio Spurs. He has done it for much of the past decade, and he did so again Sunday, scoring 36 points and leading his Dallas Mavericks to a 100-94 victory in the opening game of the teams’ first-round playoff series. Nowitzki missed just two shots and none of his 12 free throws, a stunningly efficient performance that should remind everyone that even now, two months from his 32nd birthday and a dozen seasons into his NBA career, he remains at the top of his game.

This, too, should also serve as a reminder of not only how far Nowitzki has come, but also where he’s headed. In a little more than two months, the grandest free-agent market in NBA history opens, and Nowitzki could take his place alongside LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh as one of the biggest prizes. Yet, unlike James, Wade and Bosh, Nowitzki hasn’t publicly flirted with the idea of moving to another team, and that’s because, deep down, he knows something else.

Never has he had it this good.

...Nowitzki now looks at the depth of talent around him, at all the different working parts, and sees what most of the NBA sees: This is a roster built for the grind of the playoffs.

“We have enough weapons,” Nowitzki said.

Caron Butler ranks high among them...

...Kidd has now done exactly what Cuban thought he would: He has made the game easier for Nowitzki...

...The Spurs rarely double-teamed Nowitzki on Sunday, perhaps fearful of allowing too many Mavericks to find their rhythm. Popovich instead rotated defenders at him, from McDyess to Bonner to Jefferson to Keith Bogans. None of them had any lasting success.

“I’m going to take whatever they give me,” Nowitzki said.

Nowitzki has already taken a lot from these Spurs...The Spurs have never had an answer for him, and they don’t look much closer to finding one now.

“We tried a lot of different things,” Popovich said, “and he beat them all.”

Afterward, Nowitzki said all the right stuff. A couple of his shots were lucky to fall in. He still expects the series to become a grind. The Spurs are too good, too proud, to go down easy.

Maybe he’s right. But Nowitzki also knows he has never had this much help. He looks down his bench and sees all these pieces fitting together. He sees opportunity. He watches Butler bury a 3-pointer. He watches Kidd bury another.

From across the court, the Spurs see the same, and they, too, wonder: Has Nowitzki ever looked more dangerous?

[rikhardur]

Mavs Star Dirk Nowitzki Will Never Change Some Minds Until He Changes The Color Of His Skin
By Richie Whitt Thursday, Apr 22 2010

What if I told you there was a great basketball player?

He was an All-Star. A Most Valuable Player. A future Hall of Famer. He was a class act on and off the court, his only transgression being naiveté about a past girlfriend. To him a wild night on the town was going to Richardson for a 90-minute foot massage from a hole in the wall in a quaint shopping center. He was his franchise's best all-time performer, an unprecedented 7-footer who averaged 25 points and 10 rebounds in the playoffs, took his team to the post-season 10 consecutive years and established it as an annual contender for a championship.

But what if I told you he, somehow, wasn't universally accepted in his community? Because of the color of his skin.

Dirk Nowitzki is white. And, therefore, he is the most underrated and underappreciated athlete in the history of Dallas sports. While he should be embraced as the man who rebuilt a franchise, he is instead criticized and denounced for reasons we only wish had disappeared with segregation.

In the wake of Nowitzki's near-perfect 36-point performance in the Dallas Mavericks' Game 1 victory over the San Antonio Spurs last Sunday night at American Airlines Center, I went on KRLD-FM 105.3 The Fan and lauded his performance. Immediately, the phone lines lit up.

With outlandish, unbelievable bullshit like this:

"He doesn't play defense," hollered one guy.

"Doesn't show up in the big games," barked another.

"He's soft. He'll never be an A-plus player," chortled yet another.

I realize the majority of local sports fans appreciate Nowitzki. But the fact that a vocal, boisterous minority even exists is as mystifying as it is maddening.

I won't go so far as to call the Dirk detractors racists, but I will label them racial. Instead of analyzing Nowitzki's game or commenting on the series, the critics took a curious opportunity—his 36 points on only 14 shots was the NBA's most efficient playoff game in 20 years—to remind us they see the world in black and white.

Inexplicably, to the African-American callers, Nowitzki is one of "them." Not one of "us."

"Dirk don't intimidate no one," said one of the callers. "He's just a soft white guy that'll never win anything. He's a loser."

The opinions would be entertaining if they weren't so damn scary.

It would be wrong to paint Mavericks fans with a broad brush. To be fair, I saw blacks wearing Nowitzki No. 41 jerseys at the American Airlines Center last Sunday night and there were calls from African-Americans the next morning supporting Nowitzki. Likewise, there was some "I'm white and I hate Dirk" sentiment.

But for the most part, the color-coded criticism of Nowitzki goes like this: I don't care what he does, I don't like how he does it. It's a toxic mix of stubborn insanity.

Nowitzki doesn't have tattoos or a highlight reel of dunks. He doesn't taunt. He has no street cred or sick crossover that makes fans of the And1 Tour literally fall all over each other even though the move is an obvious carrying violation. Nowitzki's all about subtle efficiency, not look-at-me braggadocio. He shoots fadeaway jumpers that are indefensible. He makes free throws (86 in a row and counting entering Game 2). He wins (with him as the centerpiece, the Mavs are in the midst of 10 consecutive seasons with 50-plus wins).

He may not be emulated on Dallas' blacktop playgrounds, but Nowitzki has scored 20,000 points in the NBA and has just as many rings as Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing and, yes, LeBron James.

Funny, because in San Antonio these days, they aren't talking about how Nowitzki is soft or overrated or inadequate on defense. They're lamenting how their once-proud franchise was reduced to purposefully fouling another player just to keep Nowitzki from scoring on them in Game 1.

"Dirk's a great player, what can you say?" Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "When I find a defense that consistently stops him I'll let you know."

For all his talents, Nowitzki is also self-aware. He realizes that, at 31, the window that had been quickly closing has been tenuously propped open by Dallas' mid-season trade acquisition of Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood. The Mavericks, who also boast Shawn Marion, are better suited for the playoffs than any team in franchise history.

That's right, I said it. We were all gutted by the 2006 NBA Finals implosion, when a 2-0 lead deteriorated into one of the most heartbreaking collapses in local sports history. And the following season, it was Nowitzki who had an atrocious Game 6 in his 67-win team's shocking first-round upset exit to the Golden State Warriors.

Time—and the trade—has healed the wounds. Nowitzki, Jason Terry, Erick Dampier and the scars remain from the Finals team, but I get the sense that Mavericks fans are again ready to emotionally invest in this team. TV ratings from last Sunday's Game 1 jumped to 13.1, up from 9.1 a year ago. Mavericks car flags that were chunked into the top of the closet years ago have been dusted off. Hope—albeit measured and careful—has returned.

Since the All-Star break, the Mavs are 24-7. They won 55 games, second in the Western Conference only to the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers. They have home-court advantage in the first two rounds of the playoffs.

They are in a rarefied air of success, with only Bill Russell's Boston Celtics, Magic Johnson's Lakers and Tim Duncan's Spurs managing similar decades of dominance. Mostly, they have Nowitzki.

"If the fans are more excited, hopefully we'll prove them right over the next two months," owner Mark Cuban said from atop his locker-room Stairmaster before Game 1. "I know this: We're better suited for playoff basketball than last year. There's more excitement. More energy."

Not bad for a team that was almost blown up in late January. Languishing around the middle of the pack in the West, Cuban one night sat in his shower and contemplated wholesale changes geared not at winning this season, but waiting for free agency in the summer and rebuilding around Nowitzki.

"I'm serious," Cuban said. "Ask my wife. We weren't playing well and there was no immediate prospect for us getting better."

The trade reshaped Dallas' roster and rebooted a city's interest. The bar, set just above mediocrity the last two seasons, is now again raised to championship heights.

"It's going to be another disappointing season for me if we don't win it," Nowitzki said before the playoffs. "Losing in the first round, second round or third round, it doesn't matter. If we don't win it all, that's another lost opportunity, another year in my prime gone."

It's not just Nowitzki that polarizes the races in Dallas. Throw out a topic these days—Terrell Owens, Tony Romo, Tiger Woods, Ben Roethlisberger, Ron Washington—and you can demark opinions almost directly along the color barrier.

If Nowitzki wins a championship, maybe he'll win over his critics. But, sadly, probably not.

What if I told you we'd made great strides on this planet? Indoor plumbing. Remote controls. Five-Hour Energy.

But, somehow, what if I told you we haven't progressed anywhere at all? When it comes to Dirk Nowitzki, Dallas still drinks from separate water fountains.

http://dirk-nowitzki-news.newslib.com/story/2465-3236701/

The article points out some interesting things. But I'd dare to say that he's not more appreciated because he's not American

[mktackabery]

Here it is the same thing. If you are white & admire a white player, it is assumed that you are a racist who doesn't like blacks. I suspect the reason Engin Atsur was undervalued as a PG in the ACC is because he was not black. At State now our main point guard is from Puerto Rico, and the things that they say about him sound very familiar. He is the same size and strength as every black point guard in the league, but he's not "fast enough," not "athletic enough," etc., etc. It never ends. White players have "high basketball IQs"(read=can't drive a lane) and black players are "athletic" (read=stupid).

The NBA is 79% black, and in the US blacks represent 12% of the population. I believe in equal rights, but it is impossible as a white person to discuss race in this country. Only minorities are allowed to discuss it. Race and racial politics are such a disaster here I no longer hope we can be a "united states." It's why I realized I can't say anything about racial tensions in any other country, either.

At the end of the day I hope Nowitzki doesn't give a shit what idiots who call into radio shows in the US think. They usually don't buy tickets.

[sinobball]

I believe in equal rights, but it is impossible as a white person to discuss race in this country. Only minorities are allowed to discuss it. Race and racial politics are such a disaster here I no longer hope we can be a "united states." It's why I realized I can't say anything about racial tensions in any other country, either.

Why do you care about what other people think? It's human nature to identify with people like you, and in the case of NBA, white players are indeed a minority.

[mktackabery]

Why do you care about what other people think? It's human nature to identify with people like you, and in the case of NBA, white players are indeed a minority.

Who said I care what other people think? I said you can't talk about it if you're white; I meant that it is impossible to have a rational discussion about race, which to me is the first step in making real change happen.