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What many people — in particular, the Miami Heat — don’t know is just how lousy Nowitzki felt when he was on the court but unable to play with any gusto during Game 4 of the Finals.


“He was the best decoy in NBA Finals history,’’ says Holger Geschwindner, Nowitzki’s mentor for the last 16 years. “He couldn’t even walk around for very long. When he tried to drive, he died on the first step.’’


That’s the way it is when you have a sinus infection and fever well over 100 degrees, and you don’t feel like doing anything, much less trying to go to work when your job is to physically outperform younger, stronger, healthier specimens.


If you go back to the turning point in the NBA Finals, it was the fact the Mavericks got away with Nowitzki being the red herring, the lure that sucked in the Miami Heat. In the first half, nine of his 10 shots were jumpers. He did not go to the free throw line. And the Mavericks were only two points down.


“We told him he had to conserve his energy for the fourth quarter,’’ Geschwindner said.
Nowitzki didn’t make a single basket in the third quarter, and when the fourth came around and the Mavericks were four points down, Nowitzki overcame the wheezing and coughing and weakness in his body to score 10 points and grab five rebounds in a quarter that yielded an 86-83 Mavericks victory and forever changed the course of NBA history.