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Originally Posted by BPo001

I saw a recent article on The Athletic talking about Dirk and burgers. Anyone have a subscription that can post the article?

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‘We ain’t through kicking your ass’: The essence of Dirk Nowitzki in a dozen stories

Tim Cato Jan 5, 2022 89
1. To Dirk Nowitzki, everyone was a burger. If you were a rookie whose name he didn’t yet know: “What’s up, burger?” An opponent going off: “This burger is unbelievable!” His teammates after a loss: “See, you burgers didn’t show up today.”

“He was infatuated with the word burger,” former teammate Jason Terry says. And so on the rare occasions that it was Terry and his teammates carrying Nowitzki to a win, Terry made sure to use the term back to him: “The burgers showed up today! Big Whoppers with cheese, baby!”

When the team arrived in cold weather cities, especially if they weren’t dressed for it, Nowitzki often yelled, “It’s freezing in here, but we needed it. We got soft!” If there was turbulence on the flight, the entire plane heard Nowitzki bellowing from the front: “Fly higher!”

On the practice court, Nowitzki constantly trumpeted with exaggerated braggadocio. “Wet, wet, wet,” he narrated to anyone listening while shooting jumpers. When assistant coaches called opening plays for him, Nowitzki announced, “This guy knows basketball!” One time warming up, Nowitzki stepped on Brad Davis’ foot and sprained an ankle. Those around the team were briefly mad at Davis until Nowitzki took the blame, saying he was the one who turned a shooting drill competitive.

“When your leader is so down to earth and cool and funny and outgoing,” Nick Van Exel says, “it’s just a good time around the team.”

2. One night in Miami, Dan Dickau shared a taxi with Nowitzki on the way to dinner. Nowitzki claimed the back seat, and when Dickau closed the door, Nowitzki tapped his shoulder. “Open the door,” he told Dickau. Confused, Dickau asked why. “Open the door,” Nowitzki said more urgently. Dickau realized in an instant: He had closed the door on Nowitzki’s fingers.

“My career flashed in front of my eyes real quick,” Dickau says. “It was pretty dang smashed, but it didn’t break any fingers, luckily.”

The next morning, Dickau hopped on an elevator that was crowded with teammates and his coach, Don Nelson, who glanced at him with an amused expression. “Ah, man, did you hear about Dickau last night?” Nelson announced to the elevator. “Yeah, the guy smashed Dirk’s hand in the car so there was nothing we could do but cut him.” Dickau would have believed him if not for the earlier look.

In any case, the mangled fingers didn’t slow down Nowitzki: He scored 41 that night.

3. He amassed 31,560 points across his career, and his jersey ascends on Wednesday, taking its rightful place in the American Airlines Center rafters, his signature No. 41 immutable in Mavericks history. “I’m just going to get lost in the moment,” he said at a Tuesday press conference, adding that “no chance” did he even imagine early on with Dallas that his career would end with a jersey retirement.

Nowitzki’s accomplishments are too many to list, but it’s worth repeating how he molded his genre. He stayed 21 years with one franchise, showing what permanence looks like in a league more increasingly defined by transient stars. He broke down whatever final barriers European basketball players had in the league. His shooting redefined his position and, then, big men everywhere. It was once said jump shooting teams would never win championships, and then Nowitzki helped the Mavs do it in 2011.

4. Nowitzki’s first catch phrases came from hip-hop songs and pop radio. “These songs would come on, rap songs, any song, and he knew every lyric,” says Dwayne Wilson. “He sang everything.” Wilson and Chad Lewis, both equipment managers when Nowitzki arrived in Dallas, fit right into the team’s main trio: Michael Finley, Steve Nash and the young German.

If Finley was the put-together eldest son and Nash the happy-go-lucky middle child, Nowitzki was the wobbly newborn, still learning how he fit into his new life in a new culture. “You were always trying to get him to do dumb stuff to get him in trouble,” Wilson said, “and he’d fall for it every time.” Finley, after all, was the person who engineered Nowitzki’s 2004 appearance on Punk’d.

Sometimes, Nowitzki got into trouble repeating phrases on the court without understanding them. “It was like when your kid first says something,” Lewis says. “Where did you get this from?” More often, it was just amusing to hear a tall, shy kid with a thick German accent repeat lyrics about, say, dealing drugs on the streets of New York.

Just like family does, they stuck up for Nowitzki just as quickly as they teased him. Early in his career, journalists would speak loudly to Nowitzki or ask if he knew English. “Why are these Americans always yelling,” Nowitzki once asked Wilson. The next time it happened, Wilson yelled back, to Nowitzki’s amusement.

“Dude, he ain’t deaf,” Wilson told them. “Just talk normally.”

5. Nowitzki’s first real rivalry was against Kevin Garnett. He didn’t like the way Nowitzki talked, the phrases he’d say on the court, and Nowitzki didn’t like Garnett either. It wasn’t until Nowitzki began talking back to Garnett that they began developing mutual, if begrudging, respect.

Wilson often talked trash to opponents from the bench. It was a moment when Nowitzki stole one of his favorite lines that made him realize Nowitzki was growing up. In a game against Minnesota, Garnett fell down and Nowitzki, without hesitation, yelled, “Get your ass up, we ain’t through kicking your ass.”

“He finally got the confidence in himself to be able to go back at ’em,” Lewis says, “and that was a big part of his growth and maturation.”

6. Nowitzki was always comfortable with music: listening to it, rapping along, whipping out his guitar in the locker room, even performing on video. Lewis knew Shaquille O’Neal from Orlando, and wanted to send him something to wish him well on his 30th birthday. He still texts this video to O’Neal every few years.

Nowitzki’s sweatpants are rolled to his knees, Nash wears a bathrobe, and Finley’s holding a pool cue for unclear reasons. While Nash and Finley mostly dance, Nowitzki knows nearly every line — actual lyrics from one of O’Neal’s songs. “It’s early out here, and we’re tired,” Nash says. They had flown home from a road trip late that evening, and when Wilson had pitched the idea on the plane, all three had enthusiastically agreed to film it.

They recorded it in one take and went home.

7. When Nick Van Exel arrived at his hotel room after being traded to Dallas in 2002, he noticed the phone’s answering machine was blinking. “I don’t have a clue who the hell it is,” he says. “So I said, ‘Fuck it, let me listen to it.’” Nowitzki had recorded him a message: playing his guitar, singing and welcoming Van Exel to the team.

“I thought that was special because he’s the superstar of the team,” Van Exel says. “That’s just the way he was, though.”

Make no mistake: His teammates quickly note Nowitzki wasn’t actually good. “(When) he would rap,” Darrell Armstrong says, “that was the worst shit in history.” It showed his genuine nature, but also why Nowitzki was better off sticking to basketball.

“They say practice makes (you) better,” Van Exel says. “I don’t think it made him better.”

8. Later in his career, Nowitzki began telling opponents how to guard him. “He would tell you, ‘You should’ve taken this angle. You would’ve prevented me from getting to the ball,’” says Thaddeus Young, recalling one such lesson. In other instances, Nowitzki would tell his defenders, “Stay down,” right before a fake shot.

“It was almost psychological,” Terry says. “It’s almost like Larry Bird. He’s telling you what he’s going to do before he does it, and then he still does it.”

Young, now 33, looks back on these moments gratefully. It may have been a strategic part of Nowitzki’s game, a boredom that came from the mastery of his craft, or even his special mild brand of trash talk in a way that was undeniably him. Either way, Young was just glad to be the student.

“He would tell me certain things, and I’m very appreciative of that,” Young says. “He was a teacher and he didn’t even know it.”

9. Tyson Chandler has one memory he often shares. He’s on the visitors’ bench at a morning shootaround before the first game of the Western Conference Finals, and he’s watching Nowitzki, more focused than he had ever seen him before. DeShawn Stevenson, sitting next to Chandler, leans over to him. “All we’ve got to do is get that man there and we’ll have a ring,” Stevenson tells him.

Dallas had just swept the defending champions, and even Kobe Bryant found himself awed. “Nobody’s going to be able to stop him,” Bryant told Nico Harrison, who represented the Lakers star for Nike’s marketing department at the time. “He’s on another planet right now.” You’ve heard the rest of the stories: Dallas coming back to beat the Heat, Nowitzki hurdling the scorer’s table to cry in the locker room, the infamous celebration that night at Club Liv.

10. Here’s one you haven’t. When the Mavericks returned to Dallas, they celebrated again. Terry invited his brother and his father, whom Nowitzki had nicknamed Mac Daddy, and a night out at The Loon eventually ended at Nowitzki’s house. Terry left late that evening, and Nowitzki called him the next morning.

“Yo, son,” Nowitzki said. “You got to get your pops, son. Your pops is still here by my pool.”

“What are you talking about?” Terry replied. “He came back with us!”

“No, I’m telling you, man,” Nowitzki said. “The Mac Daddy is out.”

Terry nearly fell down laughing.

11. Nowitzki had long built respect around the league, but his championship glory brought universal acclaim. When his 2014 documentary, “The Perfect Shot,” came out, Monty Williams, who was coaching the Pelicans at the time, watched it and bought himself a Nowitzki jersey the next day. He called Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle afterward and told him, “Please tell Dirk I have so much respect for him.”

Nowitzki came up to Williams the next time he faced his team, and he shook his hand. He didn’t say anything, and neither did Williams. “I wasn’t going to start asking about his dog or (have a) fake conversation,” Williams says. “But that’s a guy I could go fishing with. We can crack open sunflower seeds and just fish.” His authenticity had won over one of the league’s most respected coaches.

12. In the summer of 2017, Nowitzki participated in the NBA Africa Game and left impressions of his genuine nature on everyone involved. “I was blown away by how humble he was, and how present he was,” veteran coach Mike Malone says. “We’re at an orphanage, and it’s just (him) being a regular guy.” Another coach in attendance was Erik Spoelstra, who had faced Nowitzki in multiple Finals but never before spent extended time with him in a relaxed setting.

During one of the receptions, after drinks had loosened them up, Spoelstra approached Nowitzki and told him, “It’s taken me a long time to get over (the 2011 Finals).” They laughed about their shared past.

Then again, what else would you expect from someone who spent much of his career wearing the same jeans, driving an SUV gifted to him during a promotional event? Who nervously blew his lips for years before answering interview questions? Who carried a backpack and toothbrush around his first All-Star weekend, pranked into thinking it was tradition for newbies to be ready for an unexpected trip? Who still returns to the Mavericks’ offices to sign and respond to mail sent to him, as he always did?

“He was never Hollywood,” Jamal Crawford says. “That always stuck out to me.”