Dirk Nowitzki is retiring from the Dallas Mavericks. In honor of the most important and influential international star in NBA history, we are posting this chapter, “The Immigrant,” which tells the story of how Dirk developed the skills and self-belief of an NBA champion. It is loaded with memorable scenes – of mentor Holger Geschwindner having him practice to saxophone music, their journey to the Australian Outback that put Dirk’s dreams into perspective after his first-round upset by Don Nelson’s Warriors, and the traumatizing incident that made Dirk realize that Dallas was indeed his home. The chapter is from my book, The Soul of Basketball: The Epic Showdown Between LeBron, Kobe, Doc and Dirk that Saved the NBA, which you can buy here.
The third quarter was ending as Brandon Roy pulled up for a three-pointer. He was nearing the end of his brief All-Star career in Portland, as was foreseen five years earlier by the Celtics’ doctor in Boston. Roy’s knees had given out abruptly, as if they were twice as old as the rest of him. His production had collapsed, his minutes had been slashed, and now, in Game 4 of the opening round of the 2011 NBA playoffs, his Portland Trail Blazers were being clobbered by Dirk Nowitzki’s visiting Dallas Mavericks.
Roy watched his long jump shot ricochet hard back and forth within the rim, popping up to kiss the glass before tightroping along the iron and falling through the net. The response was explosive. For Dirk, it was a familiar start to another postseason failure. The Blazers were trailing by 18 points entering the fourth quarter, and yet their fans believed in the omen of that shot. Their belief was expressed ever more loudly as his teammates and then Roy himself sank shot after shot. He had been born, raised and schooled three hours to the north, marrying Roy with his fans organically as Dirk never could be married with Dallas.
There would be more jumpers and post-ups as the circuit of energy spun faster and stronger. The spiritual influence of the fans was real. Throughout the season that influence had set upon LeBron James, draining him of his power. In Portland it was empowering Roy, making him feel younger.
For Dirk, the end of the fourth quarter was like a recurring playoff nightmare played out beyond his reach: From the far side of the lane he ran helplessly at the ball as Roy banked in the winning shot thirty-nine seconds from the end. Instead of the Mavericks returning to Dallas with a 3–1 lead, the series was now even after their collapse and 84–82 loss. Roy had scored 21 points over his final dozen minutes for one of the most impressive comebacks in postseason history.
Dirk was a lonesome figure as he and his teammates left the stage for Roy to celebrate with the fans. Losses like this one once again focused the blame on Dirk because, as the Mavericks’ biggest star, he was held most responsible for their ongoing run of playoff failures. “It’s such an American mentality,” his German mentor, Holger Geschwindner, would say. Ever since his arrival in the NBA, Dirk had been the outsider in every way — nationality, culture, race, language, even his style of play and the mentoring relationship he maintained with Holger.
These thirteen seasons away from home had intensified Dirk’s need to belong — to experience the connected energy that renewed Roy’s authority. In 2008, when Dirk finally qualified for the Olympics after years of trying, he couldn’t stop crying on the court or in the locker room, for reasons too deep for him to explain. When he carried his national flag into the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing as leader of the German delegation, he grinned like the boy he had been before he met Holger. It had been more difficult than any of his rival American stars could realize for Dirk to leave behind the people and place he loved in order to pursue his NBA dream, which was always evolving and unlikely ever to come true. There had been many times when he had asked himself why he was playing in this hostile league and for what larger cause he had abandoned his home and happiness.
Now, in 2011, Dirk was 32 years old. He was used to managing the loneliness and isolation, and the despair of losses like this one in Portland. As the Mavericks showered and dressed quietly, they waited for inspiration from Dirk of the kind wielded by Roy.
“He’s not the verbal leader that you want sometimes,” said Brian Cardinal, who along with Jason Kidd had been urging Dirk to speak up. At times like this over the course of the season, they had pulled Dirk aside to plead with him: “You’ve got to say something.”
But there was nothing to be said. The next evening, back in Dallas, he and Holger would be in the gym by themselves, preparing for Game 5 the following day.
Dirk’s American teammates were incapable of empathizing with him — of grasping his desire to provide leadership, to tap into the spiritual energy that Brandon Roy claimed as a birthright. After all these years Dirk had developed his own punishing response to these losses: He embraced his humiliation, he held himself to account more harshly than he blamed his teammates, and he did everything he could to live up to the demands he made of himself. The only response he knew was to revert to the method in which he had been grounded years ago and thousands of miles away. It was a ritual that had governed the second half of his life — the half that began when Holger discovered him.
Roy watched his long jump shot ricochet hard back and forth within the rim, popping up to kiss the glass before tightroping along the iron and falling through the net. The response was explosive. For Dirk, it was a familiar start to another postseason failure. The Blazers were trailing by 18 points entering the fourth quarter, and yet their fans believed in the omen of that shot. Their belief was expressed ever more loudly as his teammates and then Roy himself sank shot after shot. He had been born, raised and schooled three hours to the north, marrying Roy with his fans organically as Dirk never could be married with Dallas.
There would be more jumpers and post-ups as the circuit of energy spun faster and stronger. The spiritual influence of the fans was real. Throughout the season that influence had set upon LeBron James, draining him of his power. In Portland it was empowering Roy, making him feel younger.
For Dirk, the end of the fourth quarter was like a recurring playoff nightmare played out beyond his reach: From the far side of the lane he ran helplessly at the ball as Roy banked in the winning shot thirty-nine seconds from the end. Instead of the Mavericks returning to Dallas with a 3–1 lead, the series was now even after their collapse and 84–82 loss. Roy had scored 21 points over his final dozen minutes for one of the most impressive comebacks in postseason history.
Dirk was a lonesome figure as he and his teammates left the stage for Roy to celebrate with the fans. Losses like this one once again focused the blame on Dirk because, as the Mavericks’ biggest star, he was held most responsible for their ongoing run of playoff failures. “It’s such an American mentality,” his German mentor, Holger Geschwindner, would say. Ever since his arrival in the NBA, Dirk had been the outsider in every way — nationality, culture, race, language, even his style of play and the mentoring relationship he maintained with Holger.
These thirteen seasons away from home had intensified Dirk’s need to belong — to experience the connected energy that renewed Roy’s authority. In 2008, when Dirk finally qualified for the Olympics after years of trying, he couldn’t stop crying on the court or in the locker room, for reasons too deep for him to explain. When he carried his national flag into the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Beijing as leader of the German delegation, he grinned like the boy he had been before he met Holger. It had been more difficult than any of his rival American stars could realize for Dirk to leave behind the people and place he loved in order to pursue his NBA dream, which was always evolving and unlikely ever to come true. There had been many times when he had asked himself why he was playing in this hostile league and for what larger cause he had abandoned his home and happiness.
Now, in 2011, Dirk was 32 years old. He was used to managing the loneliness and isolation, and the despair of losses like this one in Portland. As the Mavericks showered and dressed quietly, they waited for inspiration from Dirk of the kind wielded by Roy.
“He’s not the verbal leader that you want sometimes,” said Brian Cardinal, who along with Jason Kidd had been urging Dirk to speak up. At times like this over the course of the season, they had pulled Dirk aside to plead with him: “You’ve got to say something.”
But there was nothing to be said. The next evening, back in Dallas, he and Holger would be in the gym by themselves, preparing for Game 5 the following day.
Dirk’s American teammates were incapable of empathizing with him — of grasping his desire to provide leadership, to tap into the spiritual energy that Brandon Roy claimed as a birthright. After all these years Dirk had developed his own punishing response to these losses: He embraced his humiliation, he held himself to account more harshly than he blamed his teammates, and he did everything he could to live up to the demands he made of himself. The only response he knew was to revert to the method in which he had been grounded years ago and thousands of miles away. It was a ritual that had governed the second half of his life — the half that began when Holger discovered him.
Holger flips open the laptop to tap into the computing power and graphics that were not yet available in the 1990s, when he began to help Dirk discover his potential. At 66 Holger has mastered the newest technologies in order to create a visual language for his ideas. He clicks open the sophisticated program that he has refined over the years. On the screen is a lanky stick figure meant to resemble Dirk in profile as he shoots the basketball. Holger commands the stick man to release his jump shot, and what happens next is as natural as the reaction of a still pond to the impact of a heavy stone. A wave of energy begins around the feet and ankles, and that energy surges through the bending knees in a smooth, shivering wave up through the body’s segments, culminating in the spinning of the ball away from the tips of the man’s fingers. Which is exactly the way Dirk has been taught to shoot, his right hand flicking naturally, like a wave turning over on the shoreline.
“Coming from a soccer country,” says Holger of himself, “I make sure everything I tell is not my opinion.” The computer animation is meant to neutralize his German accent and his foreign point of view. It has been designed to withstand the scrutiny of American basketball coaches, “the little gods over here,” as Holger calls them. His program takes into account every variable he can imagine — the length of the feet, the forearm and the upper arm, and all such relevant measurements and weights necessary to the laws of physics. He has even accounted for the resistance of air, he says: “On a long shot it makes a huge difference.”
Holger manipulates the stick figure as if toying with a puppet’s strings. When the ball comes out of Dirk’s hand on a flatter line, it is less likely to find its way down through the basket. The higher the arc, the more routinely he scores.
Dirk would transform the coding of this theory into something natural and smooth: the elbow here, knees bent like so, chin raised squarely, mouth open, fingers splayed to touch the ball there and there and there. “Holger wants him to breathe at a certain time,” said Casey Smith, the Mavericks’ athletic trainer. “None of it is left to circumstances. It’s all thought through.”
In the beginning Holger tried to build a lesson plan for Dirk from the biographies and how-to manuals of the NBA’s greatest coaches and stars. Then he realized that their approaches could not be replicated. Their shooting styles and the paths of their careers could not be refitted to Dirk’s unprecedented specifications.
So he approached Dirk’s shooting as if it were a scientific experiment. Holger took into account the size of the ball in relation to the size and height of the basket, the pressure exerted on the ball by the shooter’s fingertips. To broaden his perspective he investigated the fine touch applied by pianists and violinists to their instruments, in pursuit of a shooting form that could be duplicated in a variety of conditions as played out in his modeling, first with pencil and paper and later with a computer. “Figuring it out,” he said, “you know the most precise, or the smallest amount of, pressure you can [apply to] direct the ball in anger or in pleasure. And if you know that, you can figure out where is the point where you can make the most mistakes, and the ball still goes in; and if you have that, then you can take riskier shots.”
The idea was to create a shooting stroke that would score baskets with consistency in spite of the frantic collisions and pace of the game. Dirk would not have the luxury of a golfer who can stand over every putt with the same measured form, or of a batter who can pose in the same stance, or of a pianist or violinist seated upright in a pitch-quiet hall. Dirk would be chasing and jumping and fighting for his balance against American players dead set on intimidating him physically and emotionally. Dirk’s shooting stroke would have to account for shortness of breath and imperfections of balance and fear of failure. Could Dirk do in the real world what the stick man was doing in Holger’s imagination? Could the theory of succeeding in American basketball be brought to life?
Holger dreamed and worked in a small German castle near Bamberg, in the Free State of Bavaria. His original sketches and calculations in pencil were in the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. He wished to make sense of the American sport scientifically in order to liberate its natural beauty. “What I love about the game is you do not shoot to a goalie and try to kill the guy,” he said, comparing Old World soccer with New World basketball. “So you have to be a sensitive shot. I like the combination between the physical strength, the power, the ability to move and all that stuff, and the elegance of the shooting.”
He would encourage Dirk to be elegant and strong, powerful yet sensitive, and to think his way through his doubts, knowing when to quiet his thoughts and play intuitively with trust. He wanted for Dirk to be endlessly generous and curious in all aspects of his young life, so that those qualities would be expressed in the way he played basketball. Long before his discovery of Dirk, Holger had studied the paradox of how basketball was taught in America, where the best young athletes were compelled routinely to focus on the game at the expense of their higher education. It made no sense to Holger that players should attend school in order to concentrate on basketball. He believed it should be the other way around. Basketball was an expression of values and disciplines and science that transcended the game. The player who was ignorant of those larger lessons was also going to be ignorant in his play. He might be able to zero in on doing one or two things well, but he would be unable to adapt as the needs of his team changed within each game and throughout his career.
“Coming from a soccer country,” says Holger of himself, “I make sure everything I tell is not my opinion.” The computer animation is meant to neutralize his German accent and his foreign point of view. It has been designed to withstand the scrutiny of American basketball coaches, “the little gods over here,” as Holger calls them. His program takes into account every variable he can imagine — the length of the feet, the forearm and the upper arm, and all such relevant measurements and weights necessary to the laws of physics. He has even accounted for the resistance of air, he says: “On a long shot it makes a huge difference.”
Holger manipulates the stick figure as if toying with a puppet’s strings. When the ball comes out of Dirk’s hand on a flatter line, it is less likely to find its way down through the basket. The higher the arc, the more routinely he scores.
Dirk would transform the coding of this theory into something natural and smooth: the elbow here, knees bent like so, chin raised squarely, mouth open, fingers splayed to touch the ball there and there and there. “Holger wants him to breathe at a certain time,” said Casey Smith, the Mavericks’ athletic trainer. “None of it is left to circumstances. It’s all thought through.”
In the beginning Holger tried to build a lesson plan for Dirk from the biographies and how-to manuals of the NBA’s greatest coaches and stars. Then he realized that their approaches could not be replicated. Their shooting styles and the paths of their careers could not be refitted to Dirk’s unprecedented specifications.
So he approached Dirk’s shooting as if it were a scientific experiment. Holger took into account the size of the ball in relation to the size and height of the basket, the pressure exerted on the ball by the shooter’s fingertips. To broaden his perspective he investigated the fine touch applied by pianists and violinists to their instruments, in pursuit of a shooting form that could be duplicated in a variety of conditions as played out in his modeling, first with pencil and paper and later with a computer. “Figuring it out,” he said, “you know the most precise, or the smallest amount of, pressure you can [apply to] direct the ball in anger or in pleasure. And if you know that, you can figure out where is the point where you can make the most mistakes, and the ball still goes in; and if you have that, then you can take riskier shots.”
The idea was to create a shooting stroke that would score baskets with consistency in spite of the frantic collisions and pace of the game. Dirk would not have the luxury of a golfer who can stand over every putt with the same measured form, or of a batter who can pose in the same stance, or of a pianist or violinist seated upright in a pitch-quiet hall. Dirk would be chasing and jumping and fighting for his balance against American players dead set on intimidating him physically and emotionally. Dirk’s shooting stroke would have to account for shortness of breath and imperfections of balance and fear of failure. Could Dirk do in the real world what the stick man was doing in Holger’s imagination? Could the theory of succeeding in American basketball be brought to life?
Holger dreamed and worked in a small German castle near Bamberg, in the Free State of Bavaria. His original sketches and calculations in pencil were in the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. He wished to make sense of the American sport scientifically in order to liberate its natural beauty. “What I love about the game is you do not shoot to a goalie and try to kill the guy,” he said, comparing Old World soccer with New World basketball. “So you have to be a sensitive shot. I like the combination between the physical strength, the power, the ability to move and all that stuff, and the elegance of the shooting.”
He would encourage Dirk to be elegant and strong, powerful yet sensitive, and to think his way through his doubts, knowing when to quiet his thoughts and play intuitively with trust. He wanted for Dirk to be endlessly generous and curious in all aspects of his young life, so that those qualities would be expressed in the way he played basketball. Long before his discovery of Dirk, Holger had studied the paradox of how basketball was taught in America, where the best young athletes were compelled routinely to focus on the game at the expense of their higher education. It made no sense to Holger that players should attend school in order to concentrate on basketball. He believed it should be the other way around. Basketball was an expression of values and disciplines and science that transcended the game. The player who was ignorant of those larger lessons was also going to be ignorant in his play. He might be able to zero in on doing one or two things well, but he would be unable to adapt as the needs of his team changed within each game and throughout his career.
When Dirk and Holger first met, Dirk had been thinking about dropping out of school in order to focus on basketball. Holger said no. “When I started working with Holger, the first thing he said was ‘You’re going to finish high school,’” recalled Dirk. Holger arranged for tutors to work with him in math and chemistry. When Dirk didn’t feel like practicing, Holger would put the ball away, pull out a chess board and teach him how to think. “If you want to be a good player,” said Holger, “you have to learn how to learn.”
All of Holger’s theories were tested on the court under real conditions. “Science has a big advantage: It can be proved to everybody,” he said. “So if we started coming from a soccer country, where basketball is almost nothing, we had to find a way — how can we catch up or even go ahead?” From the beginning he recognized that Dirk would be competing against a horde of skeptics in America who would question his German background and his unprecedented style of play. “It’s a crazy idea,” Holger said, “but put it in and check it out, and if the calculation does not work, forget it. And that is the best control. We put down what we wanted to achieve, how it can be done, and then we prove whether or not we are right or wrong. We go step by step, and through research and development it’s pretty much up the ladder.”
Dirk proved to be a quick learner, which inspired Holger to deepen the theory while keeping his protégé engaged. Dirk’s progress was measured by his performance in scrimmages against American teams traveling through Europe, as well as by his appearances with the German national team. All the while Holger remained sensitive to potential setbacks. “We never put him against the Soviets during the Cold War because of the shark pool,” said Holger, wary that they would try to kill the spirit of a rising Western star.
Holger was constantly gauging the outcomes as he looked for new ways to develop Dirk’s talents. “We tested it, and if I had the feeling we could get it done, so we did it,” Holger said of each experimental step. “Otherwise, we tried to find a step in between. The key is, it ends with the carrot. If the carrot is too far away, you lose everything.”
The carrot, as dangled by the NBA, led Dirk across the ocean in 1999. His ability to make shots was the vehicle to achieve his dream. “I said, ‘Okay, if there’s a 7-footer who could shoot, we could change the game,’” said Holger, who wasn’t seeking to revolutionize basketball in America, just change the likely perception of Dirk. “So we concentrated on shooting.”
In Germany he trained Dirk and more than a dozen other German teenagers in what Holger called his Institute of Applied Nonsense. Holger wore the focused expression of a serious person, but with bright eyes reminiscent of Eugène Boch’s in the famous painting by Vincent Van Gogh — eyes that sparkled like the starry night — and he refused to drum the joy out of basketball. Instead of weight lifting, which he considered a travesty for young athletes, Holger would have his players row on the lake for several hours in the morning. In the afternoon and evening there would be instruction in basketball, and at night they would sleep on the wood floor of the gym, as if seeking to be at one with the game’s nature.
Dirk remembers an experiment one afternoon at the rowing camp. The players were lined up in front of an older American of African descent who was playing jazz on a saxophone. Holger walked among the players, urging them in German to perform basketball moves to the rhythms of the music. He was marrying two of the New World’s most inspiring inventions, jazz and basketball. Who in America was trying anything like this?
All of Holger’s theories were tested on the court under real conditions. “Science has a big advantage: It can be proved to everybody,” he said. “So if we started coming from a soccer country, where basketball is almost nothing, we had to find a way — how can we catch up or even go ahead?” From the beginning he recognized that Dirk would be competing against a horde of skeptics in America who would question his German background and his unprecedented style of play. “It’s a crazy idea,” Holger said, “but put it in and check it out, and if the calculation does not work, forget it. And that is the best control. We put down what we wanted to achieve, how it can be done, and then we prove whether or not we are right or wrong. We go step by step, and through research and development it’s pretty much up the ladder.”
Dirk proved to be a quick learner, which inspired Holger to deepen the theory while keeping his protégé engaged. Dirk’s progress was measured by his performance in scrimmages against American teams traveling through Europe, as well as by his appearances with the German national team. All the while Holger remained sensitive to potential setbacks. “We never put him against the Soviets during the Cold War because of the shark pool,” said Holger, wary that they would try to kill the spirit of a rising Western star.
Holger was constantly gauging the outcomes as he looked for new ways to develop Dirk’s talents. “We tested it, and if I had the feeling we could get it done, so we did it,” Holger said of each experimental step. “Otherwise, we tried to find a step in between. The key is, it ends with the carrot. If the carrot is too far away, you lose everything.”
The carrot, as dangled by the NBA, led Dirk across the ocean in 1999. His ability to make shots was the vehicle to achieve his dream. “I said, ‘Okay, if there’s a 7-footer who could shoot, we could change the game,’” said Holger, who wasn’t seeking to revolutionize basketball in America, just change the likely perception of Dirk. “So we concentrated on shooting.”
In Germany he trained Dirk and more than a dozen other German teenagers in what Holger called his Institute of Applied Nonsense. Holger wore the focused expression of a serious person, but with bright eyes reminiscent of Eugène Boch’s in the famous painting by Vincent Van Gogh — eyes that sparkled like the starry night — and he refused to drum the joy out of basketball. Instead of weight lifting, which he considered a travesty for young athletes, Holger would have his players row on the lake for several hours in the morning. In the afternoon and evening there would be instruction in basketball, and at night they would sleep on the wood floor of the gym, as if seeking to be at one with the game’s nature.
Dirk remembers an experiment one afternoon at the rowing camp. The players were lined up in front of an older American of African descent who was playing jazz on a saxophone. Holger walked among the players, urging them in German to perform basketball moves to the rhythms of the music. He was marrying two of the New World’s most inspiring inventions, jazz and basketball. Who in America was trying anything like this?
The saxophonist was Ernie Butler, an African American soldier from Indianapolis who was stationed in West Germany during the 1950s. In his off-hours he played jazz in the nightclubs there and basketball in the small gyms of the semipro league. Butler struck up a friendship with Holger after he watched the 17-year-old score 102 points in a game. So impressed was Butler that he offered to drive the extra half hour back and forth to Holger’s boarding school so that Holger could practice with Butler’s team in Giessen.
“There was a period where all the black soldiers in Bavaria would come on Saturday to Munich,” said Butler. “There was a gym there, and guys would have these pickup games. We’d go out Saturday night to hit the bars and discos, and Sunday we’d meet again at the gym. It was really like the old days in Indiana where all the guys would come together and play. I encouraged my German team to get into that because it would help them improve their game, but they either shied away or didn’t feel comfortable. A couple guys came but they would sit up in the bleachers. But Holger? He had no problem saying, ‘Okay, I have next game,’ even though these were all black guys. And he was not just saying it — he would go and play like a maniac.”
Butler believed that Holger had come along at the wrong time, before the NBA was ready to admit players from Europe into the league. “Had he been born a few years later, he would have been one of the first guys from Europe to go play in America,” said Butler. “I think I’m being realistic when I say that.” One thing was certain: If Holger had been given any chance to play in the NBA, he would have seized it without fear.
In 1955, when Holger was 10 years old, his parents sent him to the Paul-Gerhardt- Schule, a boarding school in Laubach named after a composer of German hymns. There, in the hours between their lessons, Holger and his classmates were taught to play basketball by the headmaster, Theo Clausen, who had won a scholarship in 1934–35 to the International YMCA College (now Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, where James Naismith had invented basketball forty-three years earlier. Clausen met at least twice with Naismith — once when Naismith returned to Springfield to receive an award, and again the following summer in Berlin, where basketball was making its debut at the 1936 Olympic Games. Naismith was invited to toss the opening jump ball.
Like Holger’s father, Clausen was ordered to fight for Germany on the Russian front during World War II. After the war Clausen served as the first coach of the West German national team, based on his access to basketball at its very source. “He was one of those teachers — you are lucky if you run into him, because he loved his kids; he was really a great guy,” said Holger. He remembered Clausen showing a movie of the NBA champion Boston Celtics. The images of Bob Cousy and Bill Russell inspired Holger to imagine beyond the limits of his German basketball upbringing.
The game consumed Holger, and yet there was so much more to him than his love for basketball. He started his own version of Benjamin Franklin’s Junto, a club in which friends from various fields would make presentations about their careers in medicine, journalism, the arts and other areas of interest. (Ernie Butler spoke to the club on race relations in the United States.) When Holger was named captain of the West German basketball team for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, he pursued his interest in astrology by asking each of the opposing players for his date, time and place of birth. “He went back and did all of their horoscopes,” said Butler. “He came to me and said, ‘Ernie, I have bad news.’ He said, ‘The Americans are going to lose.’”
It was meant to happen, insisted Holger, and twice in the game for the gold medal between the United States and the Soviet Union, the officials put three seconds back on the game clock. On their third try, the Soviet team scored the game-winning basket to upset the Americans 50–49. That breakthrough created hope for players around the world that they, too, might compete with the Americans someday.
Holger was the German Jack Kerouac — traveling with a teammate and their girlfriends through the Soviet Union from Moscow through Siberia; hiking Mount Fujiyama in Japan and swimming off Hawaii; buying a broken-down UPS truck in California, repairing it and then driving it across the United States, picking up hitchhikers along the way. Holger and his companion, Elle, spent another year of exploration hitchhiking throughout the United States. One night during a trip through the Sahara, two men with guns approached his tent. He offered them coffee and talked his way out of trouble. Lesson learned? “Be as nice as possible, and get out of there as quick as possible,” he said. “It’s correct to be scared, but somehow it’s a big advantage not to know where the danger is.”
Holger had established himself as a project manager known for solving a diversity of problems — whether it was helping a German woman who was losing money on her farm in Louisiana because of false billings and phony paperwork, or designing a series of ski lifts in Spain — when he first saw Dirk as a 15-yearold playing for his local club in Würzburg, Germany. Holger had recently retired from playing basketball at age 47, and as Ernie Butler had done for him, so did Holger offer Dirk the chance to train with him several times a week. It did not occur to Dirk that this peculiar middle-aged German was two degrees of separation from James Naismith.
“There was a period where all the black soldiers in Bavaria would come on Saturday to Munich,” said Butler. “There was a gym there, and guys would have these pickup games. We’d go out Saturday night to hit the bars and discos, and Sunday we’d meet again at the gym. It was really like the old days in Indiana where all the guys would come together and play. I encouraged my German team to get into that because it would help them improve their game, but they either shied away or didn’t feel comfortable. A couple guys came but they would sit up in the bleachers. But Holger? He had no problem saying, ‘Okay, I have next game,’ even though these were all black guys. And he was not just saying it — he would go and play like a maniac.”
Butler believed that Holger had come along at the wrong time, before the NBA was ready to admit players from Europe into the league. “Had he been born a few years later, he would have been one of the first guys from Europe to go play in America,” said Butler. “I think I’m being realistic when I say that.” One thing was certain: If Holger had been given any chance to play in the NBA, he would have seized it without fear.
In 1955, when Holger was 10 years old, his parents sent him to the Paul-Gerhardt- Schule, a boarding school in Laubach named after a composer of German hymns. There, in the hours between their lessons, Holger and his classmates were taught to play basketball by the headmaster, Theo Clausen, who had won a scholarship in 1934–35 to the International YMCA College (now Springfield College) in Springfield, Massachusetts, where James Naismith had invented basketball forty-three years earlier. Clausen met at least twice with Naismith — once when Naismith returned to Springfield to receive an award, and again the following summer in Berlin, where basketball was making its debut at the 1936 Olympic Games. Naismith was invited to toss the opening jump ball.
Like Holger’s father, Clausen was ordered to fight for Germany on the Russian front during World War II. After the war Clausen served as the first coach of the West German national team, based on his access to basketball at its very source. “He was one of those teachers — you are lucky if you run into him, because he loved his kids; he was really a great guy,” said Holger. He remembered Clausen showing a movie of the NBA champion Boston Celtics. The images of Bob Cousy and Bill Russell inspired Holger to imagine beyond the limits of his German basketball upbringing.
The game consumed Holger, and yet there was so much more to him than his love for basketball. He started his own version of Benjamin Franklin’s Junto, a club in which friends from various fields would make presentations about their careers in medicine, journalism, the arts and other areas of interest. (Ernie Butler spoke to the club on race relations in the United States.) When Holger was named captain of the West German basketball team for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, he pursued his interest in astrology by asking each of the opposing players for his date, time and place of birth. “He went back and did all of their horoscopes,” said Butler. “He came to me and said, ‘Ernie, I have bad news.’ He said, ‘The Americans are going to lose.’”
It was meant to happen, insisted Holger, and twice in the game for the gold medal between the United States and the Soviet Union, the officials put three seconds back on the game clock. On their third try, the Soviet team scored the game-winning basket to upset the Americans 50–49. That breakthrough created hope for players around the world that they, too, might compete with the Americans someday.
Holger was the German Jack Kerouac — traveling with a teammate and their girlfriends through the Soviet Union from Moscow through Siberia; hiking Mount Fujiyama in Japan and swimming off Hawaii; buying a broken-down UPS truck in California, repairing it and then driving it across the United States, picking up hitchhikers along the way. Holger and his companion, Elle, spent another year of exploration hitchhiking throughout the United States. One night during a trip through the Sahara, two men with guns approached his tent. He offered them coffee and talked his way out of trouble. Lesson learned? “Be as nice as possible, and get out of there as quick as possible,” he said. “It’s correct to be scared, but somehow it’s a big advantage not to know where the danger is.”
Holger had established himself as a project manager known for solving a diversity of problems — whether it was helping a German woman who was losing money on her farm in Louisiana because of false billings and phony paperwork, or designing a series of ski lifts in Spain — when he first saw Dirk as a 15-yearold playing for his local club in Würzburg, Germany. Holger had recently retired from playing basketball at age 47, and as Ernie Butler had done for him, so did Holger offer Dirk the chance to train with him several times a week. It did not occur to Dirk that this peculiar middle-aged German was two degrees of separation from James Naismith.
Dirk was a naturally gifted athlete in tennis and team handball, the sport of his father, who played internationally for Germany. Jörg-Werner Nowitzki, who ran his own business painting houses, had the impression that basketball was for women — in part because his 5-foot 10-inch wife, Helga, had played for the German national team. “Basketball was known as a noncontact sport,” said Silke Nowitzki, Dirk’s older sister, who also grew up playing the American game.
Within a year it became obvious that Dirk could do what Holger could not — reach the NBA — as long as he was willing to commit to the adventure in full. “I don’t want to hear it from the parents; I want to hear it from his answer,” said Holger. “If he wants it, I can try to help. But he has to want it.”
In April 1998 Dirk was focused on leading his small club, DJK Würzburg, out of the second division and up to the highest tier of German basketball when Holger announced, with no warning, that they must travel immediately to America. Dirk had been invited to the Nike Hoop Summit, an all-star game in which a team of teenaged internationals would take on the best American high school players. “I said, ‘Dirk, tomorrow we fly to San Antonio,’” recalled Holger, who had kept his plans secret in order to save Dirk from the distraction.
The local newspapers were killing Holger for his sabotage of the Würzburg X-Rays, so named because Wilhelm Röntgen had discovered the X-ray in his laboratory at the University of Würzburg. But Holger knew this was Dirk’s chance to escape — and elevate — German basketball. He and Dirk arrived in San Antonio in the evening, during an official banquet for the Hoop Summit, which included Sandro Gamba, the Italian coach of the International Select Team, and his assistant, Donnie Nelson, who was chief aide to his father, Don Nelson, the new head coach of the Dallas Mavericks. Donnie Nelson was headed down to the lobby to escort Dirk and Holger to the banquet when he was stopped by a Nike representative.
“One of the Nike guys says, ‘Dirk’s welcome, Holger isn’t,’” recalled Nelson. This was no way to welcome a visitor after a long overseas trip, Nelson argued. At the same time he understood the rule against agents, because too many of them in America were exploiting young players. “So I take Dirk up and introduce him to the team, get him situated,” said Nelson. “And then I slip out, I go down and Holger’s sitting there in the frickin’ lobby, you know? He’s just sitting there. So I say, ‘Hey, come on, let’s go grab something.’ So I buy him a beer, dude, buy him dinner.”
Nelson listened to Holger’s story. He could not believe at first the point of view to which he was being introduced by Holger.
“It’s not some guy that’s been to fifty Hubie Brown clinics in Europe and just recites what Hubie has said over the years, you know what I mean?” said Nelson. “A lot of it is just common sense, it’s mathematics. And him being this untouched, untainted kind of presence that hasn’t been multi-marketed with all of the bull crap that’s out there. Because we see a lot of that. The last twenty years the U.S. coaches have been going over to Europe and doing clinics and having exchanges, and it’s all good, it’s great; but it’s the same rehashed stuff. It’s like we’ve taken our philosophies, and they evolve, yes; but very seldom do you run across this culture . . . like a culture that has never been discovered before.
“These are fresh, ingenious, creative — some weird, but a good weird — ideas. And some of the stuff is so aggressive and futuristic that it would blow someone’s mind. Even a guy like me that has been around for so long. Now, some of it I don’t agree with, candidly, but I’d say 90 percent of it is like, wow, that is a new, ingenious, creative way to teach that, or think about that, and it makes complete, total sense. It was almost like discovering a new star, or a new continent, you know what I mean?”
Holger watched the high school players on the American team warming up for the game in San Antonio as if they were trying to mimic the NBA’s arrogance. “They behaved like great stars,” said Holger. His instruction to Dirk was to seize the first opportunity: He wanted Dirk to drive the ball on the Americans and slam it down their throats. “I know this American mentality,” Holger said. “The thing is they try to scare you the first time, and if you are, it’s over.”
From the three-point line Dirk flew past one defender and threw down hard with both hands as a second American was whistled for a foul. Dirk walked away muttering in German as if he were the world’s toughest guy, as if he were not a suburban kid taught in the isolation of a grade school gym by a sensitive mentor. Dirk would set Hoop Summit records of 33 points and 14 rebounds as a 6-foot 11-inch power forward whose skills were a revelation: He was a big man who dribbled at full speed in the open court; who attacked the basket relentlessly for 23 free throws, making 19 of them smoothly and serenely; who knocked down a pair of three-pointers when his defenders, wary of committing more fouls, backed off.
He was better than Rashard Lewis, Al Harrington, Quentin Richardson and all of the other future NBA players on the American team that lost 104–99 that day. Thirty-six college scholarship offers would come to Dirk based on that performance, but more important was the attendance of forty NBA scouts at the game, and especially the presence of Donnie Nelson, who had already begun conspiring with his father. Two months later, in the middle of the night, a friend from America was telling Holger that Dirk had been chosen with the number nine pick in the NBA draft and then traded immediately to the Mavericks.
“I knew after the first practice,” said Nelson of his interest in drafting Dirk. “After that first practice we didn’t need to scout him. Certain people evaluate and project real estate; other people do it with art; we do it with human beings that shoot a little round ball, and we get paid a lot of money for this. And if you don’t know your stuff — especially when it’s so obvious — you need to find another line of work.”
Holger had believed in this day’s coming with the faith of a scientist who trusts the conditions of his experiments. They had not yet completed their five-year scheme to lead Dirk to the NBA, though that timeline had been murky because there was so little precedent. “We were very fast in his plan because he was listening,” said Holger. “In America everybody plays basketball, but they don’t teach kids the details. Everybody learns to create their own shots. They have the bodies but no technique.”
When Dirk agreed, tepidly, to join the NBA earlier than expected, Holger made the final preparations. In very little time Dirk was going to be alone in the New World. “I said, ‘Dirk, we have to talk about what money means, and what it means to be rich,’ ” recalled Holger, who explained that Dirk might have a big house with a pool and a membership at the most expensive country club someday. “But that is not being creative anymore — sitting on the money and spending the money.”
Holger backed up his point by refusing to accept any payment from Dirk apart from expenses. This arrangement would endure throughout Dirk’s career because, as Holger insisted, money was not what their experiment was all about. “I’m having fun,” Holger would say. “I get to work with a player who listens to me and learns from me. I’m doing what I want to do in a field I love.”
Together they would make a second trip to America. Holger would take Dirk to Las Vegas, to expose him to the excesses. “Dirk showed no interest,” said Holger with relief. “Then we went to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon.” They hiked down to Phantom Ranch, rested for three hours, and then began the hike back up. Holger used the long climb to explain what lay ahead for Dirk. “Many times you think you are near the top,” warned Holger, “but then you get there and find that you still have a long way to go.”
Within a year it became obvious that Dirk could do what Holger could not — reach the NBA — as long as he was willing to commit to the adventure in full. “I don’t want to hear it from the parents; I want to hear it from his answer,” said Holger. “If he wants it, I can try to help. But he has to want it.”
In April 1998 Dirk was focused on leading his small club, DJK Würzburg, out of the second division and up to the highest tier of German basketball when Holger announced, with no warning, that they must travel immediately to America. Dirk had been invited to the Nike Hoop Summit, an all-star game in which a team of teenaged internationals would take on the best American high school players. “I said, ‘Dirk, tomorrow we fly to San Antonio,’” recalled Holger, who had kept his plans secret in order to save Dirk from the distraction.
The local newspapers were killing Holger for his sabotage of the Würzburg X-Rays, so named because Wilhelm Röntgen had discovered the X-ray in his laboratory at the University of Würzburg. But Holger knew this was Dirk’s chance to escape — and elevate — German basketball. He and Dirk arrived in San Antonio in the evening, during an official banquet for the Hoop Summit, which included Sandro Gamba, the Italian coach of the International Select Team, and his assistant, Donnie Nelson, who was chief aide to his father, Don Nelson, the new head coach of the Dallas Mavericks. Donnie Nelson was headed down to the lobby to escort Dirk and Holger to the banquet when he was stopped by a Nike representative.
“One of the Nike guys says, ‘Dirk’s welcome, Holger isn’t,’” recalled Nelson. This was no way to welcome a visitor after a long overseas trip, Nelson argued. At the same time he understood the rule against agents, because too many of them in America were exploiting young players. “So I take Dirk up and introduce him to the team, get him situated,” said Nelson. “And then I slip out, I go down and Holger’s sitting there in the frickin’ lobby, you know? He’s just sitting there. So I say, ‘Hey, come on, let’s go grab something.’ So I buy him a beer, dude, buy him dinner.”
Nelson listened to Holger’s story. He could not believe at first the point of view to which he was being introduced by Holger.
“It’s not some guy that’s been to fifty Hubie Brown clinics in Europe and just recites what Hubie has said over the years, you know what I mean?” said Nelson. “A lot of it is just common sense, it’s mathematics. And him being this untouched, untainted kind of presence that hasn’t been multi-marketed with all of the bull crap that’s out there. Because we see a lot of that. The last twenty years the U.S. coaches have been going over to Europe and doing clinics and having exchanges, and it’s all good, it’s great; but it’s the same rehashed stuff. It’s like we’ve taken our philosophies, and they evolve, yes; but very seldom do you run across this culture . . . like a culture that has never been discovered before.
“These are fresh, ingenious, creative — some weird, but a good weird — ideas. And some of the stuff is so aggressive and futuristic that it would blow someone’s mind. Even a guy like me that has been around for so long. Now, some of it I don’t agree with, candidly, but I’d say 90 percent of it is like, wow, that is a new, ingenious, creative way to teach that, or think about that, and it makes complete, total sense. It was almost like discovering a new star, or a new continent, you know what I mean?”
Holger watched the high school players on the American team warming up for the game in San Antonio as if they were trying to mimic the NBA’s arrogance. “They behaved like great stars,” said Holger. His instruction to Dirk was to seize the first opportunity: He wanted Dirk to drive the ball on the Americans and slam it down their throats. “I know this American mentality,” Holger said. “The thing is they try to scare you the first time, and if you are, it’s over.”
From the three-point line Dirk flew past one defender and threw down hard with both hands as a second American was whistled for a foul. Dirk walked away muttering in German as if he were the world’s toughest guy, as if he were not a suburban kid taught in the isolation of a grade school gym by a sensitive mentor. Dirk would set Hoop Summit records of 33 points and 14 rebounds as a 6-foot 11-inch power forward whose skills were a revelation: He was a big man who dribbled at full speed in the open court; who attacked the basket relentlessly for 23 free throws, making 19 of them smoothly and serenely; who knocked down a pair of three-pointers when his defenders, wary of committing more fouls, backed off.
He was better than Rashard Lewis, Al Harrington, Quentin Richardson and all of the other future NBA players on the American team that lost 104–99 that day. Thirty-six college scholarship offers would come to Dirk based on that performance, but more important was the attendance of forty NBA scouts at the game, and especially the presence of Donnie Nelson, who had already begun conspiring with his father. Two months later, in the middle of the night, a friend from America was telling Holger that Dirk had been chosen with the number nine pick in the NBA draft and then traded immediately to the Mavericks.
“I knew after the first practice,” said Nelson of his interest in drafting Dirk. “After that first practice we didn’t need to scout him. Certain people evaluate and project real estate; other people do it with art; we do it with human beings that shoot a little round ball, and we get paid a lot of money for this. And if you don’t know your stuff — especially when it’s so obvious — you need to find another line of work.”
Holger had believed in this day’s coming with the faith of a scientist who trusts the conditions of his experiments. They had not yet completed their five-year scheme to lead Dirk to the NBA, though that timeline had been murky because there was so little precedent. “We were very fast in his plan because he was listening,” said Holger. “In America everybody plays basketball, but they don’t teach kids the details. Everybody learns to create their own shots. They have the bodies but no technique.”
When Dirk agreed, tepidly, to join the NBA earlier than expected, Holger made the final preparations. In very little time Dirk was going to be alone in the New World. “I said, ‘Dirk, we have to talk about what money means, and what it means to be rich,’ ” recalled Holger, who explained that Dirk might have a big house with a pool and a membership at the most expensive country club someday. “But that is not being creative anymore — sitting on the money and spending the money.”
Holger backed up his point by refusing to accept any payment from Dirk apart from expenses. This arrangement would endure throughout Dirk’s career because, as Holger insisted, money was not what their experiment was all about. “I’m having fun,” Holger would say. “I get to work with a player who listens to me and learns from me. I’m doing what I want to do in a field I love.”
Together they would make a second trip to America. Holger would take Dirk to Las Vegas, to expose him to the excesses. “Dirk showed no interest,” said Holger with relief. “Then we went to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon.” They hiked down to Phantom Ranch, rested for three hours, and then began the hike back up. Holger used the long climb to explain what lay ahead for Dirk. “Many times you think you are near the top,” warned Holger, “but then you get there and find that you still have a long way to go.”
“On a game day I get a phone call at five from one of the trainers,” Nick Creme said. “He said, ‘You need to get over to Dirk’s house right away and change his tire. He can’t get to the game.’”
Dirk usually carpooled to games in Dallas with his neighbor Steve Nash, but another engagement had forced Nash to drive in separately. By this time Dirk had been in America for three years. “I’m in my slacks because I work game nights; I’m kind of dressed up,” Creme said. “I go over to the house and he says, ‘They sent you?’ So I changed the tire. I got all dirty. I got the spare on in his garage, and he just sat there and watched. He had no idea how to change a tire so he could drive himself to the game. Then he said, ‘Give me your cellphone number in case something happens again with this spare.’ The next day he calls me because he wants to follow me over to the place to get the tire switched out. He says, ‘I don’t want to deal with the people by myself.’”
This was how two strangers born six weeks apart became the best of friends. Nick Creme was a 22-year-old former Division III college basketball player, a small guard who had earned an office internship with the Mavericks that led to his new full-time job with the team. Dirk was putting together an All-NBA season with astonishing skills that American basketball had never seen in a 7-footer, and yet the most mundane aspects of his new life were baffling to him. As they grew friendly, Creme would come across old snapshots of Dirk, from his rookie year in Dallas, tucked into a sleeping bag on the couch of Dirk’s mostly empty condominium. “He was sleeping on the couch before he had a bed,” Creme said. “It was ‘What the hell am I doing in this country?’”
Paychecks in enormous amounts would lay uncashed in his TV room. When he did buy a bed, it was a twin, which was much too short for someone his size. An employee of the Mavericks, Lisa Tyner, would help Dirk manage the overwhelming details of daily life. He had never lived away from home, and now he was having to find his own way in a country where so many everyday matters were foreign to him.
The truth was that he hadn’t wanted to come to America. The day after the draft, the Nelsons had arrived in Germany on a private plane to convince Dirk to accompany them back to Dallas. International players were rare in the NBA, and most of them, including Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon, had been educated in American schools. Drazen Petrovic and Sarunas Marciulionis were among the few who had established themselves in Europe before coming to the NBA. Overall, the world’s greatest basketball league was employing only thirty- eight players from outside America. The Mavericks had broken new ground by gambling a high pick in their draft-night trade for a German teenager with no meaningful experience and a counterintuitive style that he and his mentor had invented. The Nelsons couldn’t begin to sell their fans on this star of the future if Dirk was unwilling to participate in the present.
In the days preceding the 1998 draft, Holger had attempted to reduce the pressure on Dirk by announcing that he would spend the next two seasons in Europe, where several of the biggest clubs were bidding to sign him for $1 million or more per season. The Mavericks tried to assuage Dirk’s fears by arranging for him to play one-on-one in Dallas against their 6-9 power forward Samaki Walker, who himself had been a number nine pick in the 1996 draft after two seasons at the University of Louisville. Winning two of his four games against Walker gave Dirk some small hope that he would not be embarrassed in the NBA. He and Holger sat by Don Nelson’s swimming pool until the early morning, talking over the pros and cons before agreeing to give the NBA a try.
From the moment he promised to play for Dallas the next season, Dirk was hoping there would be no season. By the time he had returned home to Würzburg, NBA commissioner David Stern had made good on his threat to lock out the players, leaving Dirk with the vague expectation that the owners’ stalled contract negotiations with the players would eat up the entire 1998–99 NBA season. He spent the fall of 1998 playing for the X-Rays, until the surprise announcement of an NBA agreement in January 1999. The Mavericks opened their abbreviated training camp two weeks later, and within four days Dirk’s humiliation had begun. He averaged 8.2 points while suffering multiple embarrassments in each of the forty-seven games he played during his truncated rookie season. “Go at him! He’s soft!” he would hear the opposing bench yell at whomever he was guarding. After considering the strengths and weaknesses of his teammates, Dirk decided he was indeed the worst player in Dallas.
He thought hard about quitting; true to Holger’s preaching, his three-year contract worth $4.7 million held no value for him. Dirk had been happier making $1,000 per month with the X-Rays. Holger would make eight trips to America to console and encourage and work with Dirk privately on the court. “The first year was tough,” said Holger. “He was close to going home. I said, ‘No, giving up is not an option.’”
Dirk usually carpooled to games in Dallas with his neighbor Steve Nash, but another engagement had forced Nash to drive in separately. By this time Dirk had been in America for three years. “I’m in my slacks because I work game nights; I’m kind of dressed up,” Creme said. “I go over to the house and he says, ‘They sent you?’ So I changed the tire. I got all dirty. I got the spare on in his garage, and he just sat there and watched. He had no idea how to change a tire so he could drive himself to the game. Then he said, ‘Give me your cellphone number in case something happens again with this spare.’ The next day he calls me because he wants to follow me over to the place to get the tire switched out. He says, ‘I don’t want to deal with the people by myself.’”
This was how two strangers born six weeks apart became the best of friends. Nick Creme was a 22-year-old former Division III college basketball player, a small guard who had earned an office internship with the Mavericks that led to his new full-time job with the team. Dirk was putting together an All-NBA season with astonishing skills that American basketball had never seen in a 7-footer, and yet the most mundane aspects of his new life were baffling to him. As they grew friendly, Creme would come across old snapshots of Dirk, from his rookie year in Dallas, tucked into a sleeping bag on the couch of Dirk’s mostly empty condominium. “He was sleeping on the couch before he had a bed,” Creme said. “It was ‘What the hell am I doing in this country?’”
Paychecks in enormous amounts would lay uncashed in his TV room. When he did buy a bed, it was a twin, which was much too short for someone his size. An employee of the Mavericks, Lisa Tyner, would help Dirk manage the overwhelming details of daily life. He had never lived away from home, and now he was having to find his own way in a country where so many everyday matters were foreign to him.
The truth was that he hadn’t wanted to come to America. The day after the draft, the Nelsons had arrived in Germany on a private plane to convince Dirk to accompany them back to Dallas. International players were rare in the NBA, and most of them, including Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon, had been educated in American schools. Drazen Petrovic and Sarunas Marciulionis were among the few who had established themselves in Europe before coming to the NBA. Overall, the world’s greatest basketball league was employing only thirty- eight players from outside America. The Mavericks had broken new ground by gambling a high pick in their draft-night trade for a German teenager with no meaningful experience and a counterintuitive style that he and his mentor had invented. The Nelsons couldn’t begin to sell their fans on this star of the future if Dirk was unwilling to participate in the present.
In the days preceding the 1998 draft, Holger had attempted to reduce the pressure on Dirk by announcing that he would spend the next two seasons in Europe, where several of the biggest clubs were bidding to sign him for $1 million or more per season. The Mavericks tried to assuage Dirk’s fears by arranging for him to play one-on-one in Dallas against their 6-9 power forward Samaki Walker, who himself had been a number nine pick in the 1996 draft after two seasons at the University of Louisville. Winning two of his four games against Walker gave Dirk some small hope that he would not be embarrassed in the NBA. He and Holger sat by Don Nelson’s swimming pool until the early morning, talking over the pros and cons before agreeing to give the NBA a try.
From the moment he promised to play for Dallas the next season, Dirk was hoping there would be no season. By the time he had returned home to Würzburg, NBA commissioner David Stern had made good on his threat to lock out the players, leaving Dirk with the vague expectation that the owners’ stalled contract negotiations with the players would eat up the entire 1998–99 NBA season. He spent the fall of 1998 playing for the X-Rays, until the surprise announcement of an NBA agreement in January 1999. The Mavericks opened their abbreviated training camp two weeks later, and within four days Dirk’s humiliation had begun. He averaged 8.2 points while suffering multiple embarrassments in each of the forty-seven games he played during his truncated rookie season. “Go at him! He’s soft!” he would hear the opposing bench yell at whomever he was guarding. After considering the strengths and weaknesses of his teammates, Dirk decided he was indeed the worst player in Dallas.
He thought hard about quitting; true to Holger’s preaching, his three-year contract worth $4.7 million held no value for him. Dirk had been happier making $1,000 per month with the X-Rays. Holger would make eight trips to America to console and encourage and work with Dirk privately on the court. “The first year was tough,” said Holger. “He was close to going home. I said, ‘No, giving up is not an option.’”
At least he wasn’t the only one. A lone source of comfort was that Steve Nash was having a hard time too. Yet, paradoxically, it was because of Nash that Dirk was now suffering in Dallas. “We weren’t going to take a chance on Dirk unless there was a really, really good reason for it,” said Donnie Nelson. “Well, the really, really good reason was Steve Nash.”
Donnie Nelson had served as an assistant coach in Phoenix during Nash’s first two NBA seasons with the Suns, and he recognized the potential in Nash even as he scrounged for minutes behind the established point guards Jason Kidd, Kevin Johnson and Sam Cassell. After Nelson had been hired by Dallas, he urged his father to trade for Nash. “‘In your system I think he’s a top-five point guard in the league. I think he’s a multiyear All-Star,’” Donnie Nelson recalled telling his father. “I was commuting on my Harley back then, so I was just pulling out and all of a sudden I feel a buzz, and it’s Danny Ainge from Phoenix.” Nelson pulled over to talk to Ainge, the head coach of the Suns. Ainge told him that Nash would be sent to Dallas in a draft-night trade that would empower the Mavericks to make the other trade for the rights to Dirk.
It is hilarious to look back at the pictures of the two future MVPs being introduced side by side at a press conference in Dallas — 24-year-old Nash with his brightly dyed blond hair and Dirk, nine inches taller and four years his junior, with his own naturally blond hair parted in the middle and hanging in a floppy bowl cut.
Nash had been born in South Africa and raised in British Columbia. His younger brother, Martin, was on his way to becoming a professional soccer player in England and North America while Nash grew up idolizing Isiah Thomas for the creativity and competitive fire that enabled him to overcome his small size. At 6-3 Nash would be a different kind of underdog than Thomas. Midway through high school in Victoria, Nash was sent by his parents to a nearby boarding school so that he could raise his failing grades. He received one American basketball scholarship, from Santa Clara University in the San Francisco Bay Area. The announcement four years later that he had been chosen by Phoenix with its fifteenth pick in the 1996 draft was booed by Suns fans because they knew nothing about him. In his first year with the Mavericks, Nash turned out to be even more disappointing than Dirk. His new coach, Don Nelson, railed at him to shoot more often, while the fans booed him for shooting too much.
Nash and Dirk were a pair of immigrants trying to make sense of their surroundings, with Nash the Canadian looking out for his younger friend from Germany. They lived next door to each other in two-bedroom condos in the emerging Uptown neighborhood of Dallas. At night they would practice together at the side basket of a public gym whose main court was crowded with pickup games. Afterward they would go around the corner to their favorite bar, The Loon, for cans of beer and cheeseburgers.
The Mavericks finished seventh from the bottom of the NBA with a record of 19-31. Dirk returned home to immerse himself in the comfort of hard work. He trained every day with Holger, sleeping in the cellar of his parents’ home and then driving an hour each way to the grade school gym in Rattelsdorf, where he would fetch the key from the bakery next door. Throughout his teens, when the NBA had been a magical dream, the workouts had been experiments of theory. Now that Nelson had introduced Dallas to its foreign rookie by comparing Dirk to Larry Bird, the workouts with Holger carried more urgency.
In his second NBA year Dirk averaged 17.5 points per game, more than doubling his rookie output, while the Mavericks went 40-42, more victories than they had earned over the previous two seasons combined. By year three Dirk had moved past team leader Michael Finley to become the leading scorer in Dallas. Not only did the Mavericks qualify for the playoffs for the first time in eleven years, but they also won a first-round series under new owner Mark Cuban, and Dirk became the first Maverick ever to be named to the fifteen-player All-NBA Teams. By year four he and Nash were both All-Stars. Dirk’s career was taking off.
Donnie Nelson had served as an assistant coach in Phoenix during Nash’s first two NBA seasons with the Suns, and he recognized the potential in Nash even as he scrounged for minutes behind the established point guards Jason Kidd, Kevin Johnson and Sam Cassell. After Nelson had been hired by Dallas, he urged his father to trade for Nash. “‘In your system I think he’s a top-five point guard in the league. I think he’s a multiyear All-Star,’” Donnie Nelson recalled telling his father. “I was commuting on my Harley back then, so I was just pulling out and all of a sudden I feel a buzz, and it’s Danny Ainge from Phoenix.” Nelson pulled over to talk to Ainge, the head coach of the Suns. Ainge told him that Nash would be sent to Dallas in a draft-night trade that would empower the Mavericks to make the other trade for the rights to Dirk.
It is hilarious to look back at the pictures of the two future MVPs being introduced side by side at a press conference in Dallas — 24-year-old Nash with his brightly dyed blond hair and Dirk, nine inches taller and four years his junior, with his own naturally blond hair parted in the middle and hanging in a floppy bowl cut.
Nash had been born in South Africa and raised in British Columbia. His younger brother, Martin, was on his way to becoming a professional soccer player in England and North America while Nash grew up idolizing Isiah Thomas for the creativity and competitive fire that enabled him to overcome his small size. At 6-3 Nash would be a different kind of underdog than Thomas. Midway through high school in Victoria, Nash was sent by his parents to a nearby boarding school so that he could raise his failing grades. He received one American basketball scholarship, from Santa Clara University in the San Francisco Bay Area. The announcement four years later that he had been chosen by Phoenix with its fifteenth pick in the 1996 draft was booed by Suns fans because they knew nothing about him. In his first year with the Mavericks, Nash turned out to be even more disappointing than Dirk. His new coach, Don Nelson, railed at him to shoot more often, while the fans booed him for shooting too much.
Nash and Dirk were a pair of immigrants trying to make sense of their surroundings, with Nash the Canadian looking out for his younger friend from Germany. They lived next door to each other in two-bedroom condos in the emerging Uptown neighborhood of Dallas. At night they would practice together at the side basket of a public gym whose main court was crowded with pickup games. Afterward they would go around the corner to their favorite bar, The Loon, for cans of beer and cheeseburgers.
The Mavericks finished seventh from the bottom of the NBA with a record of 19-31. Dirk returned home to immerse himself in the comfort of hard work. He trained every day with Holger, sleeping in the cellar of his parents’ home and then driving an hour each way to the grade school gym in Rattelsdorf, where he would fetch the key from the bakery next door. Throughout his teens, when the NBA had been a magical dream, the workouts had been experiments of theory. Now that Nelson had introduced Dallas to its foreign rookie by comparing Dirk to Larry Bird, the workouts with Holger carried more urgency.
In his second NBA year Dirk averaged 17.5 points per game, more than doubling his rookie output, while the Mavericks went 40-42, more victories than they had earned over the previous two seasons combined. By year three Dirk had moved past team leader Michael Finley to become the leading scorer in Dallas. Not only did the Mavericks qualify for the playoffs for the first time in eleven years, but they also won a first-round series under new owner Mark Cuban, and Dirk became the first Maverick ever to be named to the fifteen-player All-NBA Teams. By year four he and Nash were both All-Stars. Dirk’s career was taking off.
The gray linoleum floor is lined in an array of colors to mark off a variety of sports. The German gym is a simple bright box of a room with rows of windows up high and posters of Kobe Bryant and Joe Dumars tacked onto the wooden wall behind one of the baskets.
Dirk starts by shooting jump shots that swish through as Holger passes the ball back out to him, and a casual chat in German bounces back and forth between them.
Dribbling to his right, Dirk takes one exaggerated step before allowing the recoiling momentum to spin him back the other way in a burst toward the basket. Next come the turnaround jump shots. Dirk extends his right foot out and away from the basket, pivots on it like the turning of a screw, and releases the ball just as he squares up to the rim in midair. Holger, standing near the basket, makes the same movements, like a dance instructor. When the ball gets loose, Dirk kicks it, booming, off the end wall and back toward Holger, who traps it with his feet. Soccer is and always will be their first language.
Twenty-five minutes into the workout Dirk does two complete splits of his long straight legs, one in each direction. His bones crack louder than knuckles, and Holger laughs to affirm there is nothing to fear. Then, with one knee down, Dirk grabs the ball off the floor and rises in a single motion to shoot jump shots from the free throw line. He performs variations of this exhausting drill until it is time to put on the vest.
It weighs twenty-two pounds and looks like a flattened, densely packed backpack, and it is meant to prepare Dirk’s ankles, knees and spine for the additional weight he will gain in muscle as he matures physically in the years to come. “First he develops the technique he needs in order to carry the weight, and then he will add the weight,” Holger says. “In the States they do it the other way: They increase strength without the technique.”
Holger believes that the NBA’s infatuation with muscle building is responsible for many injuries. Early in Dirk’s career, when the priority of NBA teams was to defend the paint, Holger intervened to prevent the Mavericks from transforming him into a bodybuilder. Nelson agreed that Dirk would lift twice as many repetitions of half the usual weight. It wasn’t the work that Holger was trying to avoid; it was the consequences.
Dirk wears the vest for forty-two minutes while performing exercises that would be taxing even without the extra weight. He shoots free throws with each hand. He catches the ball and spins 360 degrees on one foot at the foul line before landing squarely on both feet, in order to rise up, balanced and straight, for eleven jump shots, of which he makes ten. Next come ten consecutive dunks with either hand from under the basket, one after another: As quickly as he regains control of the ball, he is back up airborne again. Then more free throws.
A short break for a drink.
Dirk holds the ball while he and Holger cover the length of the court side by side, back and forth, in a dozen exaggerated steps each way. Then Dirk crosses the width of the court in twelve diagonal strides, reaching down to touch the floor with each step.
From the low post he is shoved away from the basket time after time by Holger, as he absorbs the contact to knock down turnaround jump shots from eighteen feet. Back under the basket, he bends deep to grab the ball off the floor with both hands just as he elevates in one motion to dunk ten times, the last five behind his head.
Finally he rips off the vest and flings it out to center court, where it lands with a loud thud. His blue T-shirt is satiny black with sweat.
Dirk was up most of the previous night with a deep toothache. He complains to Holger that his tooth is killing him as he slams the ball in pain. But then he resumes his shooting around the world of the three-point arc, groaning and gasping. “Super,” Holger says, encouraging him. Now Dirk is upside down and walking on his hands from the foul line to midcourt as Holger holds his legs up in the air for balance. Two kids watching through the crack of a window opened upstairs whoop and shout in praise of his trick, their shadows visible in the tinted glass.
Dirk then lies down and Holger stretches his legs, bending them in steady fluid movements. He kneads Dirk’s back and massages each of Dirk’s bare feet like a humble servant in the Bible. “Sit-ups,” commands Holger. Dirk groans as he exercises. “Come on,” urges Holger. Twenty sit-ups are followed by ten fingertip push-ups.
At last it is over, ninety-three minutes after it started.
What is fascinating to a basketball audience that has never seen anything like this is the monotony for 24-year-old Dirk. He has been performing these movements at the same speed with which they will be performed in an NBA game — a crucial detail — for one-third of his life already. He has done these exercises thousands of times and will do them thousands of times more, again and again and again, in order to make the extraordinary appear effortless and natural.
It is the summer of 2002, and he is approaching the peak years of his career, when the game will tease and hurt him, and reveal the depth of his devotion.
Dirk starts by shooting jump shots that swish through as Holger passes the ball back out to him, and a casual chat in German bounces back and forth between them.
Dribbling to his right, Dirk takes one exaggerated step before allowing the recoiling momentum to spin him back the other way in a burst toward the basket. Next come the turnaround jump shots. Dirk extends his right foot out and away from the basket, pivots on it like the turning of a screw, and releases the ball just as he squares up to the rim in midair. Holger, standing near the basket, makes the same movements, like a dance instructor. When the ball gets loose, Dirk kicks it, booming, off the end wall and back toward Holger, who traps it with his feet. Soccer is and always will be their first language.
Twenty-five minutes into the workout Dirk does two complete splits of his long straight legs, one in each direction. His bones crack louder than knuckles, and Holger laughs to affirm there is nothing to fear. Then, with one knee down, Dirk grabs the ball off the floor and rises in a single motion to shoot jump shots from the free throw line. He performs variations of this exhausting drill until it is time to put on the vest.
It weighs twenty-two pounds and looks like a flattened, densely packed backpack, and it is meant to prepare Dirk’s ankles, knees and spine for the additional weight he will gain in muscle as he matures physically in the years to come. “First he develops the technique he needs in order to carry the weight, and then he will add the weight,” Holger says. “In the States they do it the other way: They increase strength without the technique.”
Holger believes that the NBA’s infatuation with muscle building is responsible for many injuries. Early in Dirk’s career, when the priority of NBA teams was to defend the paint, Holger intervened to prevent the Mavericks from transforming him into a bodybuilder. Nelson agreed that Dirk would lift twice as many repetitions of half the usual weight. It wasn’t the work that Holger was trying to avoid; it was the consequences.
Dirk wears the vest for forty-two minutes while performing exercises that would be taxing even without the extra weight. He shoots free throws with each hand. He catches the ball and spins 360 degrees on one foot at the foul line before landing squarely on both feet, in order to rise up, balanced and straight, for eleven jump shots, of which he makes ten. Next come ten consecutive dunks with either hand from under the basket, one after another: As quickly as he regains control of the ball, he is back up airborne again. Then more free throws.
A short break for a drink.
Dirk holds the ball while he and Holger cover the length of the court side by side, back and forth, in a dozen exaggerated steps each way. Then Dirk crosses the width of the court in twelve diagonal strides, reaching down to touch the floor with each step.
From the low post he is shoved away from the basket time after time by Holger, as he absorbs the contact to knock down turnaround jump shots from eighteen feet. Back under the basket, he bends deep to grab the ball off the floor with both hands just as he elevates in one motion to dunk ten times, the last five behind his head.
Finally he rips off the vest and flings it out to center court, where it lands with a loud thud. His blue T-shirt is satiny black with sweat.
Dirk was up most of the previous night with a deep toothache. He complains to Holger that his tooth is killing him as he slams the ball in pain. But then he resumes his shooting around the world of the three-point arc, groaning and gasping. “Super,” Holger says, encouraging him. Now Dirk is upside down and walking on his hands from the foul line to midcourt as Holger holds his legs up in the air for balance. Two kids watching through the crack of a window opened upstairs whoop and shout in praise of his trick, their shadows visible in the tinted glass.
Dirk then lies down and Holger stretches his legs, bending them in steady fluid movements. He kneads Dirk’s back and massages each of Dirk’s bare feet like a humble servant in the Bible. “Sit-ups,” commands Holger. Dirk groans as he exercises. “Come on,” urges Holger. Twenty sit-ups are followed by ten fingertip push-ups.
At last it is over, ninety-three minutes after it started.
What is fascinating to a basketball audience that has never seen anything like this is the monotony for 24-year-old Dirk. He has been performing these movements at the same speed with which they will be performed in an NBA game — a crucial detail — for one-third of his life already. He has done these exercises thousands of times and will do them thousands of times more, again and again and again, in order to make the extraordinary appear effortless and natural.
It is the summer of 2002, and he is approaching the peak years of his career, when the game will tease and hurt him, and reveal the depth of his devotion.
By 2004 Nash had led the Mavericks to wins in four playoff series. He was also moving back to Phoenix as a free agent, because of Mark Cuban’s refusal to invest $60 million in a 30-year-old point guard with a history of back trouble. That Dirk responded with anger to the departure of his best friend and teammate was not entirely inspiring to the Mavericks. There was a hint of weakness in his exasperation. In Los Angeles, Kobe and Shaquille O’Neal were fighting over who should be The Man of the Lakers, but Dirk wanted no part of the burdens of stardom and leadership in Dallas.
“I’d make comments to him, kidding him, like, ‘You’re the franchise player here,’” said Nick Creme. “He’d always say, ‘I’m not the franchise player here. This is Finley’s team.’”
In 2005 All-Star small forward Michael Finley was waived at age 32 in order to save Cuban more than $50 million under a one-time-only provision of the collective bargaining agreement, and there could be no denying any longer that the Mavericks were Dirk’s team. Dirk was 27, and his career was pivoting naturally by way of its own momentum. After seven deferential seasons of turning away from stardom, he was now bursting into prominence whether he liked it or not.
Even now he was benefiting from low expectations. In the absence of Nash and Finley, no one was expecting Dirk to lead the Mavericks to the NBA Finals in 2006 or to be named league MVP the following season. In Game 7 of the second round of the ’06 playoffs, Dirk drove for the tying three-point play, forced overtime with a block of Tim Duncan and finished with 37 points to upset the Spurs. The game was played in San Antonio, and its victims included Finley, who had been picked up by the Spurs. Waiting for Dallas in the Western Conference Finals were Phoenix and Steve Nash, the NBA’s reigning two-time MVP. Nash’s Suns were beaten in six games by Dirk’s Mavericks.
Ten days later the Mavericks were five quarters away from becoming the least talented NBA team to win a championship in modern times. Dirk and 31-yearold Jerry Stackhouse were the only players on the 2005–06 Mavericks to have ever been All-Stars, and it had been five years since Stackhouse had played at that high a level. The center was 24-year-old DeSagana Diop, a 7-footer from Senegal, who would average less than 3 points per game in all of his dozen NBA seasons. Joining him in the starting lineup for most of the playoffs was second-year point guard Devin Harris, whose play, like that of many of his teammates, would recede under the pressure of the NBA Finals against the more gifted Miami Heat of Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning and coach Pat Riley, all future Hall of Famers. In the end that championship would be lost because Dirk’s teammates and Avery Johnson, the 41-year-old former point guard who was completing his first full season as head coach, simply weren’t good enough to earn it.
Don Nelson, who had resigned as coach of the Mavericks in 2005, recognized the pressures that were piling up on his older players, and on Dirk in particular. As the new coach of the Golden State Warriors, Nelson would impose on his former team the most embarrassing upset in the history of the NBA playoffs. Dirk’s Mavericks had responded to their 2006 Finals collapse by winning sixty-seven games during the 2006–07 regular season. But in the first round of the playoffs they could win only two of six games against the torrid-shooting Warriors, who followed Nelson’s orders to crowd and bump and harass Dirk on their way to becoming the first bottom seed to knock off a number one team in an NBA best-of-seven series.
Cuban would file a lawsuit against Nelson, to be rejected by an arbitrator, alleging that Nelson had used “confidential information” from his years with the Mavericks to plot their defeat, which was obviously true. But it was also true that the Mavericks were vulnerable. What Nelson’s Warriors did to Dirk was the same thing Doc Rivers’s Celtics would do to LeBron in Cleveland three years later. In the decisive 111–86 loss at Golden State, Dirk converted only 2 of his 13 shots for 8 points, settling for timid jumpers instead of attacking the defense, and generating more turnovers than field goals.
“I’d make comments to him, kidding him, like, ‘You’re the franchise player here,’” said Nick Creme. “He’d always say, ‘I’m not the franchise player here. This is Finley’s team.’”
In 2005 All-Star small forward Michael Finley was waived at age 32 in order to save Cuban more than $50 million under a one-time-only provision of the collective bargaining agreement, and there could be no denying any longer that the Mavericks were Dirk’s team. Dirk was 27, and his career was pivoting naturally by way of its own momentum. After seven deferential seasons of turning away from stardom, he was now bursting into prominence whether he liked it or not.
Even now he was benefiting from low expectations. In the absence of Nash and Finley, no one was expecting Dirk to lead the Mavericks to the NBA Finals in 2006 or to be named league MVP the following season. In Game 7 of the second round of the ’06 playoffs, Dirk drove for the tying three-point play, forced overtime with a block of Tim Duncan and finished with 37 points to upset the Spurs. The game was played in San Antonio, and its victims included Finley, who had been picked up by the Spurs. Waiting for Dallas in the Western Conference Finals were Phoenix and Steve Nash, the NBA’s reigning two-time MVP. Nash’s Suns were beaten in six games by Dirk’s Mavericks.
Ten days later the Mavericks were five quarters away from becoming the least talented NBA team to win a championship in modern times. Dirk and 31-yearold Jerry Stackhouse were the only players on the 2005–06 Mavericks to have ever been All-Stars, and it had been five years since Stackhouse had played at that high a level. The center was 24-year-old DeSagana Diop, a 7-footer from Senegal, who would average less than 3 points per game in all of his dozen NBA seasons. Joining him in the starting lineup for most of the playoffs was second-year point guard Devin Harris, whose play, like that of many of his teammates, would recede under the pressure of the NBA Finals against the more gifted Miami Heat of Dwyane Wade, Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton, Alonzo Mourning and coach Pat Riley, all future Hall of Famers. In the end that championship would be lost because Dirk’s teammates and Avery Johnson, the 41-year-old former point guard who was completing his first full season as head coach, simply weren’t good enough to earn it.
Don Nelson, who had resigned as coach of the Mavericks in 2005, recognized the pressures that were piling up on his older players, and on Dirk in particular. As the new coach of the Golden State Warriors, Nelson would impose on his former team the most embarrassing upset in the history of the NBA playoffs. Dirk’s Mavericks had responded to their 2006 Finals collapse by winning sixty-seven games during the 2006–07 regular season. But in the first round of the playoffs they could win only two of six games against the torrid-shooting Warriors, who followed Nelson’s orders to crowd and bump and harass Dirk on their way to becoming the first bottom seed to knock off a number one team in an NBA best-of-seven series.
Cuban would file a lawsuit against Nelson, to be rejected by an arbitrator, alleging that Nelson had used “confidential information” from his years with the Mavericks to plot their defeat, which was obviously true. But it was also true that the Mavericks were vulnerable. What Nelson’s Warriors did to Dirk was the same thing Doc Rivers’s Celtics would do to LeBron in Cleveland three years later. In the decisive 111–86 loss at Golden State, Dirk converted only 2 of his 13 shots for 8 points, settling for timid jumpers instead of attacking the defense, and generating more turnovers than field goals.
When LeBron was embarrassed by the Celtics in 2010, he behaved as if he couldn’t wait to put himself back in front of the cameras, as if The Decision would distract him (and his audience) from what had happened. Dirk’s reaction was entirely different. His instinct was to vanish overseas, as if the loss to the Warriors had been entirely his fault.
But the league office would not permit him to leave. The NBA told the Mavericks that Dirk needed to stay in Dallas on the likelihood that he would be named MVP after all of the other individual awards for the regular season had been handed out. “Are they even going to want to have a press conference?” asked Dirk, as if the fiasco of his postseason had laid to waste the preceding six months.
“He took losing that series harder than anything he’d taken,” Creme said. “He didn’t want to leave the house. He said, ‘I’m out of here — give the trophy to somebody else.’”
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse for someone than when he won the MVP,” said Casey Smith, the Mavericks’ athletic trainer, who was with Dirk when he received the news of his award. “I think, literally, he didn’t want it.”
Twelve days after his worst night in basketball, Dirk showed up for the ceremony looking overheated and uncomfortable in a dark pins-striped suit. He was the first European-born winner of basketball’s greatest individual award. He had led the NBA’s winningest team with 24.6 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. His 3.4 assists were a career best, as were his shooting percentages from the free throw line (90.4), the three-point line (41.6) and the field overall (50.2). He had been hoping to get through the ceremony by cracking self-deprecating jokes, but then Cuban preceded him to the microphone with an emotional speech in which he cried while praising Dirk’s commitment.
“You don’t have to encourage him to get into the gym; he’s the guy you have to lock out,” Cuban said. “He’s not the guy who you wonder if he cares; he’s the guy who hurts so much when things don’t go the way you want. That’s what makes him an MVP. He’s an example that you don’t have to fit a certain role, a certain model, but if you work hard enough and care enough, anything is possible.”
Dirk was embarking on the most important period of his career. Everything that had happened to him until now had been influenced by the forces of will around him. He had been guided by Holger’s curiosity and generosity, Nash’s passion and Cuban’s ambition, and the currents of their influence in combination with the power of his own oars had swept him along. The ride had been carefree and fun, as he looked back, and nothing like the next phase of his development would be. Now, as never before, he was on his own to decide who he was and why he played and what it was going to amount to in the end. It was time to find the meaning in the blue eyes staring back at him in the mirror, the mask that smiled to hide the loneliness and self-doubt, the artificially bright front teeth anchored in his jaw after so many violent collisions. Dirk, who had eschewed the arrogance presupposed of his talent, had to make a stand on behalf of himself, and he had to do it now.
He had achieved a standard that far exceeded his own expectations eight years earlier when he came to America. He had become the most valuable individual of the world’s greatest league. And he realized now, as he held the large trophy in his hands, that it meant nothing to him.
There was no gray area or silver lining to lighten his mood. Other stars of the NBA would have gladly found space for the MVP award within the trophy room of their minds: Kobe would have been able to separate the excellence of his regular season from any shortcomings of the postseason, just as surely as LeBron would be encouraged to rationalize his individual awards despite his team’s failures. But Dirk could not. He was an immigrant, and basketball was not his game, nor was the United States his country nor English his first language nor Dallas his hometown. Everywhere he was a guest, always having to prove his worthiness. From the start he and Holger had set out to distance themselves from the other big men, in order to create a new perspective that might enable Dirk to earn the respect that so many American players took for granted. The NBA was a league filled with stars who behaved as if they were entitled to the acclaim and the millions of dollars handed down to them from the era of Michael Jordan. Dirk was among the exceptions, and his humility made him exceptional in every way. He felt no sense of entitlement because he believed he had to earn his place in this league and this country that had invited him to pursue his faraway dream.
The ceremony celebrating his magnificent achievement filled him with guilt. He gave the large MVP trophy to his parents in Germany, with the understanding that they would appreciate it more than he would.
But the league office would not permit him to leave. The NBA told the Mavericks that Dirk needed to stay in Dallas on the likelihood that he would be named MVP after all of the other individual awards for the regular season had been handed out. “Are they even going to want to have a press conference?” asked Dirk, as if the fiasco of his postseason had laid to waste the preceding six months.
“He took losing that series harder than anything he’d taken,” Creme said. “He didn’t want to leave the house. He said, ‘I’m out of here — give the trophy to somebody else.’”
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt worse for someone than when he won the MVP,” said Casey Smith, the Mavericks’ athletic trainer, who was with Dirk when he received the news of his award. “I think, literally, he didn’t want it.”
Twelve days after his worst night in basketball, Dirk showed up for the ceremony looking overheated and uncomfortable in a dark pins-striped suit. He was the first European-born winner of basketball’s greatest individual award. He had led the NBA’s winningest team with 24.6 points and 8.9 rebounds per game. His 3.4 assists were a career best, as were his shooting percentages from the free throw line (90.4), the three-point line (41.6) and the field overall (50.2). He had been hoping to get through the ceremony by cracking self-deprecating jokes, but then Cuban preceded him to the microphone with an emotional speech in which he cried while praising Dirk’s commitment.
“You don’t have to encourage him to get into the gym; he’s the guy you have to lock out,” Cuban said. “He’s not the guy who you wonder if he cares; he’s the guy who hurts so much when things don’t go the way you want. That’s what makes him an MVP. He’s an example that you don’t have to fit a certain role, a certain model, but if you work hard enough and care enough, anything is possible.”
Dirk was embarking on the most important period of his career. Everything that had happened to him until now had been influenced by the forces of will around him. He had been guided by Holger’s curiosity and generosity, Nash’s passion and Cuban’s ambition, and the currents of their influence in combination with the power of his own oars had swept him along. The ride had been carefree and fun, as he looked back, and nothing like the next phase of his development would be. Now, as never before, he was on his own to decide who he was and why he played and what it was going to amount to in the end. It was time to find the meaning in the blue eyes staring back at him in the mirror, the mask that smiled to hide the loneliness and self-doubt, the artificially bright front teeth anchored in his jaw after so many violent collisions. Dirk, who had eschewed the arrogance presupposed of his talent, had to make a stand on behalf of himself, and he had to do it now.
He had achieved a standard that far exceeded his own expectations eight years earlier when he came to America. He had become the most valuable individual of the world’s greatest league. And he realized now, as he held the large trophy in his hands, that it meant nothing to him.
There was no gray area or silver lining to lighten his mood. Other stars of the NBA would have gladly found space for the MVP award within the trophy room of their minds: Kobe would have been able to separate the excellence of his regular season from any shortcomings of the postseason, just as surely as LeBron would be encouraged to rationalize his individual awards despite his team’s failures. But Dirk could not. He was an immigrant, and basketball was not his game, nor was the United States his country nor English his first language nor Dallas his hometown. Everywhere he was a guest, always having to prove his worthiness. From the start he and Holger had set out to distance themselves from the other big men, in order to create a new perspective that might enable Dirk to earn the respect that so many American players took for granted. The NBA was a league filled with stars who behaved as if they were entitled to the acclaim and the millions of dollars handed down to them from the era of Michael Jordan. Dirk was among the exceptions, and his humility made him exceptional in every way. He felt no sense of entitlement because he believed he had to earn his place in this league and this country that had invited him to pursue his faraway dream.
The ceremony celebrating his magnificent achievement filled him with guilt. He gave the large MVP trophy to his parents in Germany, with the understanding that they would appreciate it more than he would.
Meanwhile Dirk, knowing now what he did not want, sought out places in the world where he could figure out what he did want. Holger, who had traveled everywhere, served as his guide. They spent the next five weeks in and around Australia, at the bottom of the earth. They lived in a jeep equipped with bunk beds on the plains of the Outback, sleeping out in the open like frontiersmen. They took in Beethoven at the Sydney Opera House, hiked the canyons of Central Australia, sailed and snorkeled along the Great Barrier Reef. They drove through New Zealand. They rented a house on a Tahitian beach. Almost everywhere he traveled, Dirk went unrecognized. His hair and beard grew unkempt. He drank whiskey from the bottle. He read books in German, slept in the pitch-black of the outdoors and woke with the dawn.
For all that Don Nelson had done in Dallas to define Dirk as a creator of mismatches, it was as coach of the Warriors that he provided his ex-player with the ultimate assessment of his talent. In six playoff games over a dozen days he stripped away from Dirk any sense of comfort and satisfaction for the great distances he had climbed so far, and by the end of that miserable series, Dirk was forced to recognize how much further he had to go.
Over the years to come, the Mavericks’ playoff losses would weigh on Dirk like heavy dumbbells in each hand; instead of letting them go, he would lift them incessantly to make himself stronger. A consensus opinion was forming that he lacked the indefinable qualities of an NBA champion. It was to Dirk’s credit that these criticisms had no impact on him. What bothered him painfully, however, were the faults that he recognized in himself and that he knew deep down to be real and true. All of the rest of it he could ignore.
Instead of doubting Holger and his methods, Dirk grew ever more committed to their code. He underwent blood tests to determine the foods that would provide the energy he needed. He showed little interest in selling himself commercially, and at the end of each season he continued to donate his playoff share to his fellow Mavericks employees — kicking in more from his own pocket in years of early elimination. The star who was caricatured as soft recovered from injuries quickly and played through pain to a degree that would astonish Casey Smith, who remembered thinking the worst one night when Dirk went down awkwardly and hard. “His leg twisted so much it almost broke the bone,” said Smith. “And he missed four games. It’s mind-boggling.”
Dirk’s ankles were perpetually getting sprained. “In Germany they build good cars,” Smith once said, “but they don’t build good ankles.” With each sprain he would be sent home with a bucket of ice bags. “The first twenty-four hours are crucial — you’ve got to keep it elevated to keep the swelling down, to keep the ice on it — and he won’t sleep,” said Creme. “He’ll be on the couch with NBA TV on, and it’s kind of funny because he’s sprained them so many times now, but he’ll be up all night icing it.” The next game Dirk would be running on his heels like an old man, his crooked arms exaggerated like a racewalker’s to create momentum and carry him through the opening minutes.
“When you roll your ankle, you tear ligaments every time,” explained Dr. Brian McKeon of the Boston Celtics. “Some guys tear it so much that the ligament basically dissolves; they’ve got nothing there, and bone spurs take over and actually pull it together.” Dirk was at that stage. Along the way he was abandoning the wide-open spaces of the three-point line and forcing himself with increasing frequency to play in the low post, like a traditional American big man with his back to the basket. All of the disappointments and pain were deepening his understanding and his hunger. He was learning to see all of the colors, to hear all of the notes.
What he decided at the discouraging end of his greatest season in 2007 was that he had come to the NBA to be a champion. He was going to embrace his greatness in order to win for his team. For the rest of his basketball life every game was going to be important, to a degree he had never imagined in those carefree years when he took neither the game nor himself so seriously.
Whenever Dallas returned to Oakland to play the Golden State Warriors, the Mavericks’ communications manager, Scott Tomlin, would stop Dirk in the hallway outside the visitors’ locker room and point up high. There was a dent in the drywall made by a large garbage bin that Dirk had thrown in anger after losing in the 2007 playoffs. “Look, it’s still there,” Tomlin would say as the years went by, and Dirk was strong enough to laugh with him.
For all that Don Nelson had done in Dallas to define Dirk as a creator of mismatches, it was as coach of the Warriors that he provided his ex-player with the ultimate assessment of his talent. In six playoff games over a dozen days he stripped away from Dirk any sense of comfort and satisfaction for the great distances he had climbed so far, and by the end of that miserable series, Dirk was forced to recognize how much further he had to go.
Over the years to come, the Mavericks’ playoff losses would weigh on Dirk like heavy dumbbells in each hand; instead of letting them go, he would lift them incessantly to make himself stronger. A consensus opinion was forming that he lacked the indefinable qualities of an NBA champion. It was to Dirk’s credit that these criticisms had no impact on him. What bothered him painfully, however, were the faults that he recognized in himself and that he knew deep down to be real and true. All of the rest of it he could ignore.
Instead of doubting Holger and his methods, Dirk grew ever more committed to their code. He underwent blood tests to determine the foods that would provide the energy he needed. He showed little interest in selling himself commercially, and at the end of each season he continued to donate his playoff share to his fellow Mavericks employees — kicking in more from his own pocket in years of early elimination. The star who was caricatured as soft recovered from injuries quickly and played through pain to a degree that would astonish Casey Smith, who remembered thinking the worst one night when Dirk went down awkwardly and hard. “His leg twisted so much it almost broke the bone,” said Smith. “And he missed four games. It’s mind-boggling.”
Dirk’s ankles were perpetually getting sprained. “In Germany they build good cars,” Smith once said, “but they don’t build good ankles.” With each sprain he would be sent home with a bucket of ice bags. “The first twenty-four hours are crucial — you’ve got to keep it elevated to keep the swelling down, to keep the ice on it — and he won’t sleep,” said Creme. “He’ll be on the couch with NBA TV on, and it’s kind of funny because he’s sprained them so many times now, but he’ll be up all night icing it.” The next game Dirk would be running on his heels like an old man, his crooked arms exaggerated like a racewalker’s to create momentum and carry him through the opening minutes.
“When you roll your ankle, you tear ligaments every time,” explained Dr. Brian McKeon of the Boston Celtics. “Some guys tear it so much that the ligament basically dissolves; they’ve got nothing there, and bone spurs take over and actually pull it together.” Dirk was at that stage. Along the way he was abandoning the wide-open spaces of the three-point line and forcing himself with increasing frequency to play in the low post, like a traditional American big man with his back to the basket. All of the disappointments and pain were deepening his understanding and his hunger. He was learning to see all of the colors, to hear all of the notes.
What he decided at the discouraging end of his greatest season in 2007 was that he had come to the NBA to be a champion. He was going to embrace his greatness in order to win for his team. For the rest of his basketball life every game was going to be important, to a degree he had never imagined in those carefree years when he took neither the game nor himself so seriously.
Whenever Dallas returned to Oakland to play the Golden State Warriors, the Mavericks’ communications manager, Scott Tomlin, would stop Dirk in the hallway outside the visitors’ locker room and point up high. There was a dent in the drywall made by a large garbage bin that Dirk had thrown in anger after losing in the 2007 playoffs. “Look, it’s still there,” Tomlin would say as the years went by, and Dirk was strong enough to laugh with him.
Several of Dirk’s friends on the Mavericks staff were with him in a restaurant in Denver, across the street from the hotel where they were staying for the second round of the 2009 playoffs, when his cellphone rang. Dirk sat quietly among his friends, listening to someone on the phone, speaking tersely. A short time later the news that his fiancée, Cristal Taylor, who had falsely claimed to be pregnant while living with Dirk, had been arrested at his home in Dallas. Police would identify her by at least eight aliases she had used over the years. A judge in Missouri would sentence her to five years in prison for a parole violation linked to forgery and theft charges.
When Dirk had turned 30 the previous summer, he had gone through a kind of midlife crisis. In fact he was past middle age as an athlete. It had been fourteen years since he had made his leap of faith with Holger, and what did he have to show for it? He had no championship, no wife, no children, no achievement of permanence that he valued.
These were the circumstances that drew him to the mirage of Cristal Taylor. When his friends would visit Dirk, she would stay in the back of the house, out of sight. Dirk’s family in Germany worried about him, and Holger did more than worry. He hired a private investigator to research her background, and he was the one who broke the truth of her identity to Dirk. Imagine the risk to their relationship that Holger had taken: How many alliances with an American agent, coach or mentor had ended because the millionaire athlete had fallen for a woman who was no good for him?
The ensuing scandal was the worst of all humiliations for Dirk. Dating back to his arrival in Dallas, he had carried himself in public as if he could afford no mistakes, as if he was forever trying to make a good first impression on America. The scandal amounted to a new depth of failure for him. It also revealed a strength that had been developing over the years without his notice.
Instead of mocking Dirk, the people of Dallas rose up and supported him. Instead of criticizing him or laughing at his expense, they expressed sympathy for him. People calling in to talk shows, letters to newspaper editors and comments posted online combined to create a wellspring of goodwill. They were explaining in all kinds of ways that they had grown to appreciate Dirk’s integrity. It was if he was experiencing his version of It’s a Wonderful Life, in which the hero is overwhelmed by friendships he never knew he had. Dirk had been in Dallas for more than ten years, and not until the worst of all his bad moments occurred would he realize that he had established himself as more than a basketball player for the Mavericks. He was isolated no more in the public sense. His roots, having been tested, were found to be secure. He had become a respected leader of the community, a virtual neighbor to everybody who had been following him for all these years.
The Mavericks would lose that Denver series in five games to Carmelo Anthony’s Nuggets, but Dirk, amid the heat of the scandal, would generate an inspired 34.4 points, 11.6 rebounds and 4 assists per game.
He was determined, more than ever, to fight for his new home.
When Dirk had turned 30 the previous summer, he had gone through a kind of midlife crisis. In fact he was past middle age as an athlete. It had been fourteen years since he had made his leap of faith with Holger, and what did he have to show for it? He had no championship, no wife, no children, no achievement of permanence that he valued.
These were the circumstances that drew him to the mirage of Cristal Taylor. When his friends would visit Dirk, she would stay in the back of the house, out of sight. Dirk’s family in Germany worried about him, and Holger did more than worry. He hired a private investigator to research her background, and he was the one who broke the truth of her identity to Dirk. Imagine the risk to their relationship that Holger had taken: How many alliances with an American agent, coach or mentor had ended because the millionaire athlete had fallen for a woman who was no good for him?
The ensuing scandal was the worst of all humiliations for Dirk. Dating back to his arrival in Dallas, he had carried himself in public as if he could afford no mistakes, as if he was forever trying to make a good first impression on America. The scandal amounted to a new depth of failure for him. It also revealed a strength that had been developing over the years without his notice.
Instead of mocking Dirk, the people of Dallas rose up and supported him. Instead of criticizing him or laughing at his expense, they expressed sympathy for him. People calling in to talk shows, letters to newspaper editors and comments posted online combined to create a wellspring of goodwill. They were explaining in all kinds of ways that they had grown to appreciate Dirk’s integrity. It was if he was experiencing his version of It’s a Wonderful Life, in which the hero is overwhelmed by friendships he never knew he had. Dirk had been in Dallas for more than ten years, and not until the worst of all his bad moments occurred would he realize that he had established himself as more than a basketball player for the Mavericks. He was isolated no more in the public sense. His roots, having been tested, were found to be secure. He had become a respected leader of the community, a virtual neighbor to everybody who had been following him for all these years.
The Mavericks would lose that Denver series in five games to Carmelo Anthony’s Nuggets, but Dirk, amid the heat of the scandal, would generate an inspired 34.4 points, 11.6 rebounds and 4 assists per game.
He was determined, more than ever, to fight for his new home.
Dirk and Holger were in a gym in Dallas, continuing the work that had consumed and propelled the latter half of Dirk’s lifetime. Few words were spoken. The routine had not changed. This was the rhythm of his life, the music of his heart. Sweat bled through his shirt.
It bears repeating: As Ernie Butler had done for Holger, so was Holger doing for Dirk. “It was pretty much the same situation,” Holger said, the difference being that Butler had taught what he knew, while Holger was teaching what he believed could be. Dirk maintained his faith in Holger’s science in the same way that frontiersmen believed in their code and would not budge from what they knew to be right.
There was no certainty that Dirk would triumph. During that summer of 2010 leading up to The Decision, when LeBron, Wade and Chris Bosh were recruited by more suitors than they wanted, Dirk waited in Germany for his phone to ring. And it did not. No NBA team called to show interest in him. He flew into Dallas without fanfare, per his wishes, and late on the eve of his contract negotiations with Cuban, he went online to the Mavericks’ website. “They did a thing where all the fans could write a note to me,” Dirk said. “I read through some of it, and that was actually really emotional. Some of the fans hit the nail on the head. Yeah, it was great, some of the stuff they said. Obviously some were like, ‘Please go.’ But most of them were so nice.”
This was better than being recruited.
The next day at the owner’s mansion, where Dirk and Cuban met alone, it was obvious to both of them that they were stuck with each other. Cuban had been unable to recruit a star like LeBron, leaving him to settle on the imminent trade that the Mavericks would make for Tyson Chandler. Dirk had been ignored by the NBA marketplace. No one believed in him except this billionaire, who had become his partner in basketball and his supportive friend, and who was telling him now, as emotionally as when he had spoken up for Dirk at the MVP ceremony three years earlier, that they were in this together.
As he walked out of Cuban’s house, having shaken hands with the owner on his next contract, Dirk realized he had accomplished more than he ever could have envisioned from this adopted way of life. All that was left was to win the championship for Cuban, for the Mavericks and their extended family of fans, for the city of Dallas, for his own family and all of his supportive friends, for Holger and for himself. It was a long list of gratitude for someone who had arrived in America frightened and alone.
Like a tailwind helping Dirk along, the warmth of that summer propelled him through the 2010–11 season and into the opening round of the playoffs against the Trail Blazers. Two nights after their devastating Game 4 loss in Portland, the Mavericks beat the Trail Blazers on their home court in Dallas on 25 points from Dirk. They flew back to Portland, where Dirk scored 33 points to lead them to another win and finish off the series in six games.
As the Mavericks walked off the court, the fans of Brandon Roy were quiet, and neither Dirk nor his teammates were smiling. They were headed for a second- round series against the defending champion Lakers, who were pursuing a third straight title, a fourth successive NBA Finals appearance and the sixth championship for Kobe, to equal Michael Jordan.
Who was Dirk to think that he and his team could beat Kobe and Phil Jackson and the winningest franchise of modern times? Yet Dirk walked on, staring ahead absently, as if not seeing what lay beyond the next workout with Holger.
For more on Dirk Nowitzki and the 2010-11 NBA season that defined the sport, purchase The Soul of Basketball: The Epic Showdown Between LeBron, Kobe, Doc and Dirk that Saved the NBA here.
It bears repeating: As Ernie Butler had done for Holger, so was Holger doing for Dirk. “It was pretty much the same situation,” Holger said, the difference being that Butler had taught what he knew, while Holger was teaching what he believed could be. Dirk maintained his faith in Holger’s science in the same way that frontiersmen believed in their code and would not budge from what they knew to be right.
There was no certainty that Dirk would triumph. During that summer of 2010 leading up to The Decision, when LeBron, Wade and Chris Bosh were recruited by more suitors than they wanted, Dirk waited in Germany for his phone to ring. And it did not. No NBA team called to show interest in him. He flew into Dallas without fanfare, per his wishes, and late on the eve of his contract negotiations with Cuban, he went online to the Mavericks’ website. “They did a thing where all the fans could write a note to me,” Dirk said. “I read through some of it, and that was actually really emotional. Some of the fans hit the nail on the head. Yeah, it was great, some of the stuff they said. Obviously some were like, ‘Please go.’ But most of them were so nice.”
This was better than being recruited.
The next day at the owner’s mansion, where Dirk and Cuban met alone, it was obvious to both of them that they were stuck with each other. Cuban had been unable to recruit a star like LeBron, leaving him to settle on the imminent trade that the Mavericks would make for Tyson Chandler. Dirk had been ignored by the NBA marketplace. No one believed in him except this billionaire, who had become his partner in basketball and his supportive friend, and who was telling him now, as emotionally as when he had spoken up for Dirk at the MVP ceremony three years earlier, that they were in this together.
As he walked out of Cuban’s house, having shaken hands with the owner on his next contract, Dirk realized he had accomplished more than he ever could have envisioned from this adopted way of life. All that was left was to win the championship for Cuban, for the Mavericks and their extended family of fans, for the city of Dallas, for his own family and all of his supportive friends, for Holger and for himself. It was a long list of gratitude for someone who had arrived in America frightened and alone.
Like a tailwind helping Dirk along, the warmth of that summer propelled him through the 2010–11 season and into the opening round of the playoffs against the Trail Blazers. Two nights after their devastating Game 4 loss in Portland, the Mavericks beat the Trail Blazers on their home court in Dallas on 25 points from Dirk. They flew back to Portland, where Dirk scored 33 points to lead them to another win and finish off the series in six games.
As the Mavericks walked off the court, the fans of Brandon Roy were quiet, and neither Dirk nor his teammates were smiling. They were headed for a second- round series against the defending champion Lakers, who were pursuing a third straight title, a fourth successive NBA Finals appearance and the sixth championship for Kobe, to equal Michael Jordan.
Who was Dirk to think that he and his team could beat Kobe and Phil Jackson and the winningest franchise of modern times? Yet Dirk walked on, staring ahead absently, as if not seeing what lay beyond the next workout with Holger.
For more on Dirk Nowitzki and the 2010-11 NBA season that defined the sport, purchase The Soul of Basketball: The Epic Showdown Between LeBron, Kobe, Doc and Dirk that Saved the NBA here.
Nowitzki's longtime mentor, Holger Geschwindner, is honored at the Dallas Mavericks game after Nowitzki reaches 30,000 points in his NBA career on March 7, 2017.