Dirk Nowitzki took a pay cut in 2014 to help the Dallas Mavericks assemble an NBA title contender.
Which they haven’t done.
They have invested in Chandler Parsons and Wesley Matthews, and they have whiffed on DeAndre Jordan, but they have yet to put together a team, a core, worthy of the financial sacrifice Nowitzki made.
The natural response to the current, mediocre state of the Mavericks has included two reflexive staples: You criticize Dallas and lament how Dirk is spending the twilight of his career. And justifiably so. But Dirk doesn’t want to hear any of it, because Dirk is the man, and he remains the man, even at 37 years old, with the Mavericks no closer to contending for a title than they were after they blew apart 2011’s championship-caging crew.
Here’s Nowitzki telling you this in his own words, per The Dallas Morning News:
“Yeah, well, you know, I always said I wanted to compete. Once we felt the championship, the excitement in the city, what happened here – it was incredible. As a competitor, you’d love to climb the mountain again, and have that feeling and excitement again. We just haven’t been as close. We made a couple business decisions as a franchise as I always have said after the lockout and, you know, basically hoping that free agency will help us and cap space. But it just hasn’t. It hasn’t taken over the way we wanted to. It was a lesson learned probably the past few years that we maybe would have done different. But afterwards, you’re always smarter.
But listen, I see, obviously, reports on Twitter all the time, guys hitting me up ‘I feel bad for Dirk.’ Don’t feel bad for me. I love what I do and we get paid a lot of money to do what we do. I love competing and I love the sport still. I’ve been lucky to do it for a long, long time. Came here, whatever, 18 years ago not knowing what to expect and it’s been an incredible journey. I don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me. I’m going to compete like I always have and then one day it’ll be all over.”
Confession: I love Dirk. He is just the best, a rare blend of optimism and realism. He’s also right.
Could the rest of his basketball days be spent playing for a cyclical first-round playoff exit? Absolutely. Unless the Mavericks strike gold in free agency this summer, that’s exactly what will happen. But he already has a championship to his name, a first-ballot Hall of Fame selection in his future, and a boatload of money in the bank. And, for a 37-year-old, he’s super healthy, often playing like a 27-year-old All-Star.
It’s hardly shocking, then, that his complaints are limited, if nonexistent—though it helps that there are plenty of people on Twitter and the Internet at large doing all the necessary complaining for him.
