It’s Nowitzki or never for the Mavericks
Dirk Nowitzki was playing with a temperature of 101°F.
So that explained it then. The German-born Dallas Mavericks star had been below par in those three quarters, struggling to make his shots and stack up points like he had been in the previous three games of a fascinating series against the Miami Heat.
Miami, on the other hand, led by the herculean efforts of their star guard Dwyane Wade, looked like they were cruising towards a potentially insurmountable 3-1 series lead. They weren’t going to wait around and wonder why the player for whom they had prepared so hard was so off-colour.
The unholy trinity of Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh pressed ahead and as the fourth quarter got going, a mauling looked on the cards.
And so America shuddered. Not only was this highly-anticipated series set to be an anti-climax but the one team every neutral could agree to despise, the elaborately assembled Miami Heat, were about to once again deny basketball’s favourite European player a first ever championship.
Then something clicked.
Nowitzki drew on all his reserves, inspiring a 21-9 run of scoring in the last ten minutes that blew Miami away.
The 7ft German scored ten of those 21 points, including a right-handed lay-up with 14.4 seconds left, sealing Dallas’ second incredible comeback in this series after the heroics of Game Two in Miami.
And just like that, Dirk Nowitzki’s legacy was secured.
A year after Holger Geschwinder first discovered a future NBA star in the German town of Würzburg, he gave his protégé an ultimatum.
Geschwindner, now 65, learned basketball from American soldiers stationed in Germany after World War II, played for the West German Olympic team in Munich in 1972 and spotted the raw teenager by accident, Nowitzki’s game having gone into overtime.
“You must now decide whether you want to play against the best in the world or just stay a local hero in Germany,” he told Nowitzki. “If you choose the latter, we will stop training immediately, because nobody can prevent that anymore. But if you want to play against the best, we have to train on a daily basis.”
It took him two days of soul-searching to sign up for the long haul. After subsequently inspiring DJK Würzburg to a promotion push for the top flight of the Basketball Bundesliga, he and Geschwinder decided to explore their options in the US.
It was Rick Pitino, the then coach of the Boston Celtics who first compared the young Nowitzki to Larry Bird. But Pitino was left frustrated after the Milwaukee Bucks drafted the German before immediately trading him to the Dallas Mavericks in one of those chess moves unique to American sporting transactions.
The fourth German player in NBA history got off to a slow start and took some heat from Dallas fans for his defensive failings. But the club underwent a revolution in early 2000 when internet billionaire Mark Cuban took over the team, a charismatic owner who remains popular with the team. Just a year later, Nowitzki signed a six-year, $90m contract extension, which made him the second highest-paid German sports star after Michael Schumacher.
It was all mapped out now.
In 2003, he became the first European to score 2,000 points in a single season. In 2005, he did it again. In 2006, he led his team to the Western Conference title only to fall short to Miami in the NBA Finals. In 2007, he was named the league’s MVP. In 2010, he became the 34th player in NBA history to pass 20,000 points.
He was now a fully fledged star but the stigma of failed post-season bids grew larger with every column inch written about him.
Despite or because of those annual disappointments, he maintained the eye-watering work ethic Geschwindner had embedded in him over a decade earlier.
While most of the rest of the league went on holidays every spring, the Mavs power forward went back to a tiny gym in the German village of Rattelsdorf to refresh some of the skills his mentor had taught him.
Nowitzki, 33 next week, is most renowned for utilising his height in an “unguardable” jump shot which Geschwindner worked out for him using calculus, discovering that an arc of at least 47 degrees would maximise his potential. Mobile for his height, he also looked to work on other aspects of his game too: rebounds, spin moves, bank shots, fadeaways — all the complex tools of the modern basketball player.
Before Game Five, Dwayne Wade and LeBron James were shown laughing, pretending to cough and wiping their faces on their shirts, mimicking Nowitzki’s appearance during Game Four when he struggled to play while battling a fever and flu-like symptoms.
But it may have backfired. After five games, Dallas are taking a 3-2 lead back to Miami tomorrow night, primarily because of the extraordinary drive shown by their main man. But if he’s fearful of missing out again, he isn’t showing it.
“Dirk is a very private person,” says Mavericks president Donnie Nelson. “But he took a lot of arrows and went through a lot of pain. Most people would have been broken.”
Miami must win twice and their home advantage will compensate for an alarming dip in confidence. If they do manage to quell the Mavs tide, it would be the cruellest blow of all for Nowitzki.
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