Dirk Nowitzki, even after nearly two decades of being set in his basketball ways, is not afraid of change.
Not even the kind of change that demands he jump to center full-time for the Dallas Mavericks. He’s always been a shooter in the body of a center, but now he may actually start playing center.
Per ESPN.com’s Tim MacMahon (h/t RealGM):
Dirk Nowitzki on the possibility of center becoming his primary position for the rest of his career: “I’m ready for everything, whatever it may be. I think there’s a few dominant forces at center that I’d rather not see, but other than that, we all know that it’s not a post-up league anymore. It’s a pick-and-roll league, it’s a movement league, it’s a transition, line-your-guy-up, drive-it league. The league has gone smaller and smaller and smaller, so if that’s an option for us, great.”
Nowitzki, who moved to center when the Mavs shook up the starting lineup before snapping their five-game losing streak Monday in Charlotte, has thrived offensively and held up as a rebounder in limited exposure at the position this season. According to data from nbawowy.com, Nowitzki has averaged 24.9 points and 11.1 rebounds per 36 minutes as a center. The Mavs have outscored their opponents by 69 points in 215 minutes with Nowitzki as the big man.
This isn’t a huge change for Nowitzki. Almost one-third of his career minutes have come at center, according to Basketball-Reference. But it’s still a change, one that’s representative of where the NBA is going.
The league is now trafficking in stretch 5s, bigs who can score from anywhere on the floor, be it three-point range or as an attacker off the dribble. Nowitzki fits that offensive bill. He’ll struggle the most on the defensive end, where he isn’t a rim protector and won’t be able to help Dallas’ rotations on ball-handlers much.
That said, Nowitzki should be able to survive.
There aren’t a ton of stretch centers in the league just yet, so he’ll have an offensive mismatch just about every night. Even when more versatile forwards are switched onto him, that still creates a mismatch for someone else.
Can this move hold up long term, spearheading the Mavericks’ push to get into the playoffs? We don’t exactly know. But the Mavericks, who are only 1.5 games from dropping outside the West’s playoff bubble, seem prepared to find out.
