The Dallas Mavericks knew they had a talented player when they acquired Dirk Nowitzki in 1998. They projected that Nowitzki’s upside could be limitless, but they also wanted to maximize his size and youth over other big men. To do so, the Mavs made the German rookie work in the lab.
At that time, the Mavericks had a versatile power forward in Samaki Walker to ensure that Nowitzki was getting a feel of how the bigs would play him during games. Based on how Samaki described their practice sessions, young Dirk was too soft to be banging bodies with his matchups..
After some time, the Mavs finally devised a different approach to developing Nowitzki. With the help of Walker, Dallas eventually unlocked their unicorn’s full potential.
“When Dirk came in, he couldn’t walk and chew bubble gum when it came to that down there,” Walker said on “Scorer’s Society” this past May. “How do I know? They made me stay after practice and work with Dirk. I used to play one-on-one with Dirk because when they tried to put him in, he was too easy. He wasn’t physical enough. And so, they would make me play with him and I would just move Dirk. I would post Dirk, push him all the way up to the free throw line.”
“Guess where they start turning his game to? Making him catch it? [at the free throw line]. And that was probably the evolution of the game, though. And he started killing from there. And I couldn’t do nothing with him from there. When they started giving Dirk [the ball] there and he got the ball up here [above the head] and started shooting from up here, he was unstoppable,” he added.
The NBA wasn’t ready for Dirk
It didn’t take long for the entire league to realize that they weren’t ready for what Nowitzki was capable of as a player. After the lockout of the 1998-99 season, he began to make waves in the NBA.
Towering at 7’0,” Nowitzki was already a problem. However, Walker was right. Dirk’s remarkable outside shooting, which was a rarity for a big man at the time, made him even more challenging to deal with.
In just his fourth year with the Mavs, Nowitzki earned his first All-Star appearance after averaging an exceptional tally of 23.4 points, 9.9 rebounds, with 39.7% 3-point field goal accuracy. From that point forward, “German Jesus” became the face of the franchise.
Dirk was the toughest soft player of his era
Even though Nowitzki was torching his matchups, many still labeled him soft. With that in mind, he spent the better part of his prime years proving otherwise.
For Nowitzki, he was far from soft. Instead, Dirk firmly believed that his unconventional and revolutionary style of play was just ahead of his time.
At some point, the German star finally earned the respect of both his peers and the fans by winning the 2007 season MVP award. Four years later, Dirk shut down his critics by upsetting the Miami Heat’s “Big 3” in the 2011 Finals to lead the Mavs to their first NBA championship in franchise history.
At present, fans no longer remember Nowitzki for being soft. Instead, they celebrate his legacy as one of the pioneers of how the game is being played today.