Official Dirk is Great Thread

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by Flacolaco

Damn I love Dirk. I wish he were on the radio more often.

Yea...it kinda disturbs me how much I love the dude. I have a dirk key for the front door and my son took a look at it and said.. "I'm starting to worry a little bit about you dad".

[GermanDunk]

^ A Dirk key ? What does it look like ?

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by GermanDunk

^ A Dirk key ? What does it look like ?

Like this...

[FINtastic]

This interview is great.

Dirk is giving some pretty high compliments to Kidd right now.

[GermanDunk]

Arenas - haha

[GermanDunk]

That was awesome. There he goes - the great Dirk. Couldn´t find a better closing.

[mary]

Dirk's interview is the top post right now.

http://www.theunticket.com/

[mavErika]

Originally Posted by mary

Dirk's interview is the top post right now.

http://www.theunticket.com/

Thanks everyone for hinting at that, looking forward to listen to the Dirkster for half an hour!

Probably it's just that my browser lacks a plug-in or something like that (can't listen live either), but I didn't see a play-button or a download-link there, so I searched a little and here is the direct download-link for the interview:

http://www.theunticket.com/wp-conten...w_01_06_10.mp3

[FINtastic]

Originally Posted by mavErika

Thanks everyone for hinting at that, looking forward to listen to the Dirkster for half an hour!

Probably it's just that my browser lacks a plug-in or something like that (can't listen live either), but I didn't see a play-button or a download-link there, so I searched a little and here is the direct download-link for the interview:

http://www.theunticket.com/wp-conten...w_01_06_10.mp3

How did you find out how to download the audio from that site? I have been trying to figure out from a while (I'm not very tech-savvy) because I've been wanting to download some of their 8:40 bits.

[mavErika]

Originally Posted by FINtastic

How did you find out how to download the audio from that site? I have been trying to figure out from a while (I'm not very tech-savvy) because I've been wanting to download some of their 8:40 bits.

I clicked on "SUBSCRIBE TO THE RSS FEED" in the upper right corner of the home page and got to this site: http://feeds.feedburner.com/theunticket .

And there you have it, and if you click "View Feed XML", pretty fast you get an idea which audio-downloads are available. There's a similiar page for theticket-podcasts which I check regularly, but unfortunately most of them are little 6min-soundbits, and very few are Mavs-related.
I'm also not very tech-savvy and don't have a podcatcher or any subscriptions other then a few newsletters, so I don't know why this site seems to focus more on audio-posts than the first one I found yesterday, but maybe that helps you too.

[SMC0007]

Originally Posted by mary

Dirk's interview is the top post right now.

http://www.theunticket.com/

There is always great stuff on that site. *Especially the Fake Jerry and Wade!

[jthig32]

Dirk promised his mom that he's going to cut his hair soon.

[twelli]

Thanks for sharing!!! Nothing really new there, but nice to hear him talking.

[fluid.forty.one]

I have such a man crush on Dirk.

[fluid.forty.one]

Dirk is 16 points away from 20k. He SHOULD get it against the Lakers.

[fluid.forty.one]

Plus/Minus: Mavs' Dirk Nowitzki Is Twice As Good As You Think He Is
Meanwhile, Our Old Friends With The Nets Dominate The Downside
By Mike Fisher -- DB.com

Plus/minus sometimes strikes me as an advanced stat that masters the obvious: A great player on a good team gets a +. Bad players on bad team get a -. Right?

Nevertheless, it can be food for thought … especially when somebody goes to the trouble of adding up the Top 10 League Leaders in Cumulative Plus/Minus … as well as the NBA’s Worst 10 in that department.

Any surprises here? Dirk Nowitzki might just be twice as good as you think he is, with a “monster’’ number. Any major downers here? Yeah, a certain ex-Mav is right where you would expect him to be.











From Kawakami’s San Jose blog (with his comments):



League leaders in cumulative plus/minus

1. Ron Artest +306 (plus/minus ratio: +4.1, huge for a team as good as the Lakers)

2. Anderson Varejao +295 (plus/minus ratio: +2.5, plays great off of LBJ, obviously)

3. Josh Smith +275 (plus/minus ratio: +1.8, Atlanta’s very good)

4. Kobe Bryant +274 (plus/minus ratio: +1.9, difficult for superstars to get a lot higher than their already-good teams, since they’re doing so much of the heavy lifting)

5. Dwight Howard +268 (plus/minus ratio: +2.1)

6. LeBron James +267 (plus/minus ratio: +1.2, as I was saying)

7. Dirk Nowitzki +266 (plus/minus ratio: +4.7 MONSTER NUMBER)

8. Al Horford +261 (plus/minus ratio: +1.4)

9. Ray Allen +259 (plus/minus ratio: +0.5)

10. Mike Bibby +257 (plus/minus ratio: +1.3)



And the worst (Kawakami says, “The NBA makes it harder to find these, so I had to do it going through every roster, might’ve missed somebody or screwed something up’’)



1. Brook Lopez -286

2. Jonny Flynn -260

3. Ryan Hollins -237

4. Troy Murphy -227

5. Al Jefferson -234

6. Devin Harris -220

7. Chris Douglas-Roberts -215

8. Corey Brewer -214

9. TJ Ford -203

10. Trent Hassell -201



On the plus side, it might be instructive to note that The UberMan’s numbers are so plump that his +4.7 is TWICE what other “great’’ players’ numbers are.

On the down side, there is poor Devin Harris … and a bunch of his teammates … Nets players who dominate the bottom 10. No surprise there, but … food for thought.

[Nowitzki4President]

Pretty cool little video about the evolution of Dirk in the league on NBA.com, just thought I'd share:

http://www.nba.com/video/channels/nb...ospective.nba/

[sefant77]

Any chance Dirk gets a statue like Jordan in front of the AAC in a few years? :P

[GermanDunk]

Germany is awesome !

[Skywalker]

I don't know if this was already posted, but it's a nice article about Dirk

Promise fulfilled as Nowitzki reaches impressive plateau


Posted Jan 13 2010 12:44PM

In an age when pre-teen players are scouted from the time they begin filling up hoops in middle school, there are very few surprises when it comes to identifying prospective NBA talent.

Yet on one night in San Antonio, back in March of 1998, the echoes of basketballs bouncing off the walls were mixed with the sound of so many jaws practically hitting the hardwood floors.

Donn Nelson, then a Dallas Mavericks scout and now the team's president of basketball operations, remembers glancing around the stands and wondering how many other NBA bloodhounds were on hand to catch a whiff of what he'd just witnessed. There was the scent of potential in the air.

A tall, skinny, blond-haired teen from Germany had just put on a clinic against the best young talent that America had to offer at the Nike Hoop Summit -- 33 points, 14 rebounds, three steals and more moves than a belly dancer -- and all Nelson could think of was the future.

"A versatile 7-footer who could shoot from out there and run the floor?" Nelson recalled not so long ago. "Imagine the possibilities."

Nearly 12 years later, the promise has been fulfilled as Dirk Nowitzki moves to become the 34th player in NBA history to score 20,000 points in a career. He is averaging 25 points a game this season and needs 16 Wednesday against the Los Angeles Lakers to reach the plateau.

From the record books, one can see that Nowitzki has been an eight-time All-Star, a four-time All-NBA first team selection and was chosen the 2007 Most Valuable Player. From the video highlights, it's easy to see an ambidextrous, multi-position player who is unique in combining his size with his shooting skills. He's a 7-footer who is a career 47.2 percent shooter from the field and has canned more than 1,100 3-pointer while also grabbing 8.5 rebounds. Nowitzki is a deft ball-handler and nimble enough big man to spin around defenders and finish with slam dunks.

But who sees and understands more than an opposite number in a different color jersey, the player most often regarded as the fiercest competitor in the game today?

"He's tough," said the Lakers' Kobe Bryant. "That's what I like about him. He's not a punk. A lot of superstar players don't like to get touched. They're kind of finicky about how they go about things. Dirk's nasty and that's what I like about him. He'll take the gloves off and go at it."

That's a far cry from the early days of a career that had him labeled as "soft" and had Nowitzki known as Irk -- no D. Over the course of his career, Nowitzki has developed into a solid team defender, become the Mavs' unquestioned team leader and has staked his claim as the best international player to jump straight to the pro ranks in the NBA. Nigerian Hakeem Olajuwon spent three years learning the ropes at the University of Houston before stepping into the NBA and Argentine Manu Ginobili honed his game for two years in the Italian League before joining the San Antonio Spurs.

The Americanization of Nowitzki began as a 19-year-old with little more than a sweet jumper and an outsider's tentative grasp of a different culture, coming from the picturesque Bavarian town of Wurzburg, Germany, known for architecture, art and white wine. His career path has been a steady, upward line on a graph that has frequently had Nowitzki playing off the charts.

"It's tough to argue that he's not the best international player ever," said Bryant. "We're gonna try to make a case when it's all said and done for [Spaniard] Pau Gasol years from now. But Dirk is phenomenal right now.

"If you look at some of the games that he's had against great players, it's amazing. I think his coming out party years ago was against [Kevin] Garnett. Garnett is a phenomenal player and Dirk was putting up 35 and 20 rebounds. That's ridiculous. I'm looking at that like, 'Whoa, Garnett's one of the best defensive players ever and [Dirk] torched him.' "

Two nights before, Houston's Tracy McGrady had his legendary 13-points-in-35 seconds finish to defeat the San Antonio Spurs on Dec. 4, 2004, T-Mac dropped 48 points in Dallas. In the same game, Nowitzki hit back and scored 53.

"Dirk's not gonna back down. I like that," Bryant said. "He's not soft. Oh, no."

Though he grew up trying to emulate the all-around skills of Scottie Pippen, because he's blond and tall and white and can shoot with either hand, from the time he entered the league Nowitzki has always drawn the comparisons to the legendary Larry Bird.

"They're very different actually," Bryant said. "The similarity is that they're big guys that can shoot. But I think that's where it ends. Bird with the Celtics, they ran a lot of things through him to facilitate things for others. In Dallas they use Dirk more as a striker.

"Hopefully the fans in Dallas can appreciate what they watch -- a 7-footer that can put the ball on the floor, can shoot it from the outside, can post. Dirk's a rare breed, man. A rare breed."

Who's come a long way to get so far.

http://www.nba.com/2010/news/feature...s=iref:nbahpt1

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by Skywalker

"He's tough," said the Lakers' Kobe Bryant. "That's what I like about him. He's not a punk. A lot of superstar players don't like to get touched. They're kind of finicky about how they go about things. Dirk's nasty and that's what I like about him. He'll take the gloves off and go at it."

I think the days of ignorant people calling Dirk soft are mostly over. But if it ever happens again, just show them this. What more do you need?

[wga]

Originally Posted by jthig32

I think the days of ignorant people calling Dirk soft are mostly over. But if it ever happens again, just show them this. What more do you need?

i just don't understand people who can't appreciate dirk and underrate him so much. just joined here today to congrats his milestone. the most underrated player in the league.

[wga]

Originally Posted by Skywalker

I don't know if this was already posted, but it's a nice article about Dirk

Though he grew up trying to emulate the all-around skills of Scottie Pippen, because he's blond and tall and white and can shoot with either hand, from the time he entered the league Nowitzki has always drawn the comparisons to the legendary Larry Bird.

"They're very different actually," Bryant said. "The similarity is that they're big guys that can shoot. But I think that's where it ends. Bird with the Celtics, they ran a lot of things through him to facilitate things for others. In Dallas they use Dirk more as a striker.

"Hopefully the fans in Dallas can appreciate what they watch -- a 7-footer that can put the ball on the floor, can shoot it from the outside, can post. Dirk's a rare breed, man. A rare breed."


http://www.nba.com/2010/news/feature...s=iref:nbahpt1

seems like kobe watched a lot of dirk's game.
by the way ,isn't the writer a rocket beat writer

[SMC0007]

..and this

"If you look at some of the games that he's had against great players, it's amazing. I think his coming out party years ago was against [Kevin] Garnett. Garnett is a phenomenal player and Dirk was putting up 35 and 20 rebounds. That's ridiculous. I'm looking at that like, 'Whoa, Garnett's one of the best defensive players ever and [Dirk] torched him.' "

Two nights before, Houston's Tracy McGrady had his legendary 13-points-in-35 seconds finish to defeat the San Antonio Spurs on Dec. 4, 2004, T-Mac dropped 48 points in Dallas. In the same game, Nowitzki hit back and scored 53.

"Dirk's not gonna back down. I like that," Bryant said. "He's not soft. Oh, no."

[badfish22]

Dirk cut the hair

http://www.nba.com/video/mavericks/

[CadBane]

Very nice to see the respect from Kobe. I actually respect Kobe a lot as a player.

[fluid.forty.one]

Anyone notice that there are a LOT of articles about Dirk recently. ESPN, NBA.com, whatever. Lots and lots.. and not just about 20k. The headlines seem to be more favorable as well, "Dirk too much for the Thunder" for example.

[badfish22]

Originally Posted by fluid.forty.one

Anyone notice that there are a LOT of articles about Dirk recently. ESPN, NBA.com, whatever. Lots and lots.. and not just about 20k. The headlines seem to be more favorable as well, "Dirk too much for the Thunder" for example.

yeah I have noticed that. this one praises Dirk a lot.

[Sportstudi]

Originally Posted by badfish22

yeah I have noticed that. this one praises Dirk a lot.

excellent article, true

[dude1394]

Others out there. I snagged one quote for a sig.

http://www.thetwomangame.com/2010/01/reflections/

Reflections
Nowitzki prefers to stay hidden, keep everyone focused on his game. Off the court, he takes the brilliant tack of appearing uninteresting, which he is decidedly not. (How many NBA players teach themselves guitar or read Joseph Conrad?) At press conferences he drops his voice, tape recorders shoved beard-close. He avoids eye contact, says little. Dull by design, he has no interest in being the color in the commentary. “He’s a character. He’s funny,” says teammate Jason Kidd. “He can laugh at himself. But unless you’re in the inner circle, you’ll never see that side.”
....
Or rather, if Mavs fans have spent the last decade building a 20-foot high statue of Nowitzki in marble, Glock and Crain have destroyed it. Not in the name of myth-shattering revolution, but simply so we can erect a new one, standing a mere seven feet, bearing the inscription: “Behold Dirk Nowitzki, the man who made the Mavericks great.

[dude1394]

Another one with some great links to dirkster memories. I also liked the commentary from the author about how cynical he became after the 2006 bennet salvatore (*&*(&*() rigging.

Dirk Nowitzki: 20,000 Points, 11 Seasons, One Fan for Life

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/3...e-fan-for-life

[fluid.forty.one]

Dirk just passed Tom Chambers for 33rd all time on the scoring list. Next is Ray Allen with 20,277 and counting.

[dude1394]

Nice little piece on the dirkster from basston...

http://www.weei.com/sports/boston/ba...ltics-identity

Nowitzki is in the midst of his ninth straight season in which he will average better than 20 points and eight rebounds per game. Because of the way his career has turned out, and because of the way the Mavs blew their chances during his two best seasons, he may never get the credit he deserves.


“I don’t know if there’s ever been a player like Dirk,” Rivers said. “They run plays for him like we run for Ray.”
Nowitzki is a 7-footer who shoots like a guard, which makes him something of a prototype for the “Stretch 4” that has become so much in vogue this era. But he is so good that he even breaks the mold that he helped create.

[CadBane]

Ehh, we don't really run Dirk off of screens like Ray Allen/Rip for quick catch and shoots. That's not really accurate,

[jthig32]

Originally Posted by CadBane

Ehh, we don't really run Dirk off of screens like Ray Allen/Rip for quick catch and shoots. That's not really accurate,

It's certainly not uncommon for Dirk to catch and shoot off a down screen.

I think the point is not too many other seven footers ever do that.

[SMC0007]

Latest NBA.com poll:

Who'll have the biggest game Wednesday?

Kevin Durant
Dwyane Wade
Danny Granger
Carmelo Anthony



Dirk not mentioned.

[Sportstudi]

Originally Posted by SMC0007

Latest NBA.com poll:

Who'll have the biggest game Wednesday?

Kevin Durant
Dwyane Wade
Danny Granger
Carmelo Anthony



Dirk not mentioned.

No wonder... Doesn't matter if it's NBA.com or ESPN. Dirk gets barely mentioned there regardless his game. That's just a shame.

[dude1394]

http://www.waitingfornextyear.com/?p=23611

I remember watching the Mavericks play the Lakers a couple weeks ago as Dirk Nowitzki surpassed the 20,000 point plateau. Even though it only placed him 33rd on the NBA’s All-Time scoring list (a far cry from #5), the Dallas fans immediately went absolutely nuts. They gave Dirk a rousing ovation and it took almost 20 minutes it seemed for the crowd to die down. Nowitzki acknowledged the crowd in return, and for one night, the game took on a celebratory vibe for everyone in the arena. Even when Zydrunas Ilgauskas set the Cavalier record for most career games played in a Cleveland uniform, the crowd inside The Q that evening would not be denied the chance to show their love to Big Z despite the fact Ilgauskas asked for there not to be a big deal made of it.


So I wondered what was going to happen Tuesday night when Shaq recorded that 28,000th point. I got my answer early on when 50 seconds into the game Shaq took a pass from LeBron and made a layup to surpass the milestone mark. I will fully admit that perhaps my viewpoint from TV land was skewed, but what I witnessed was not a joyous eruption of praise and celebration, but instead a polite, workmanlike round of applause.

[fluid.forty.one]

Dirk makes the all-star team again. Congrats, Dirk!

[LonghornDub]

Originally Posted by fluid.forty.one

Dirk makes the all-star team again. Congrats, Dirk!

Obviously he will make it, but they aren't announcing til Thursday, I thought.