UNCASVILLE, Conn. – It wasn’t exactly breaking news that Dirk Nowitzki supplied on Friday at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame press conference.
But it was one of the stories that was priceless. And there were a lot of them.
Going into the hall with Tony Parker and Gregg Popovich is a bit strange, Nowitzki said. While they are two people he respects immensely, they also were bitter rivals back in the day.
“I’m not going to lie, I used to hate the Spurs,” Nowitzki said, channeling his Captain Obvious with a heavy dose of truth serum. “Every year, they were so good for so long. They were always kind of beating us up, they were the big brother until we finally broke through I think in ’06 and beat them for the first time in the playoffs. Just a credit to them how good they, how good Timmy (Duncan) was for two decades. All those guys, Manu (Ginobili), Tony . . . but I was never a huge Spurs fan.”
Time, however, really does heal a lot of wounds.
And just as Nowitzki and Miami’s Dwyane Wade put their ill will toward each other behind them in Houston during the Final Four when both were announced as Hall of Fame inductees, Dirk and the Spurs have moved on.
Nowitzki’s enshrinement party will hit its crescendo Saturday evening with the ceremony officially inducting him into the hall. He enters in his first year of eligibility, as does Parker.
And it was the Frenchman Parker who paid Nowitzki the ultimate tribute Friday when all the inductees chatted with media members assembled in the Cabaret Theater at the Mohegan Sun Casino.
This is a truly international class of hall of famers with Pau Gasol joining the Big German and Parker as players entering.
“But it started with Dirk,” Parker said. “He paved the way. And he was the GOAT of European basketball. It’s pretty cool to see how European basketball has exploded since (Dirk’s arrival).”
Nowitzki doesn’t see it, of course. His humble nature won’t allow him to view himself as a foundation piece of the globalization of the NBA.
But there’s no doubting his impact.
“He told me that yesterday,” Nowitzki said of Parker’s Greatest Of All Time quote. “I was very humbled by that. I always give credit to everybody else. There were guys that paved the way for me.”
Nowitzki then rattled off Detlef Schrempf, Toni Kukoc, Drazen Petrovic and others, including the great Arvydas Sabonis, whose best years were never seen in America. He was a shell of his dominant self by the time he arrived with the Portland Trail Blazers.
But still, Nowitzki was a beacon for Europeans.
“If I came in and helped inspire or motivate some guys along the way, that makes me incredibly proud,” Nowitzki said. “It’s always hard. It’s part of the special debate. Everybody is always wanting to compare eras. It’s just impossible to do. Styles change. The game is so different now than even 20 years ago.”
Nowitzki is reliving a career this weekend. And it’s already had some interesting twists.
If you’d asked him 10 years ago if he could envision doing anything with Parker and Wade, he’d have probably laughed at the prospect.
But here he is. Not only going into the hall in a year with superior international influence, but also with Wade, his tough-as-nails adversary for so many years when the Mavericks and Miami Heat were doing battle – twice in the NBA finals and many times in the regular season in between.
“We actually bonded together the last few weeks and months, starting in Houston,” Nowitzki said of Wade when the two were told they would be hall of famers. “We competed at the highest level on the highest stage and there were things said on both sides. It was emotional at times.
“There were frosty times between us. That’s a good word to sum up the relationship. But now that it’s all said and done I think there’s an appreciation and respect for each other’s career. Most of the stuff we were fighting over is kind of over and done with. I’m happy to go in the hall with him. It’s a great class. He was one of the best two-guards to ever play the game, obviously.”
Said Wade: “It’s crazy going into the hall of fame with Dirk. First of all, Dirk’s older than me. And obviously, being competitors and the parallels of our careers.
“It’s fitting, though. It feels right.”
Another member of the 2023 hall class, Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich, couldn’t have been prouder of going in with such an international group of players.
After all, he was one of the early scouts who tried to uncover talent overseas. He knew it was fertile recruiting ground because he’d played there on military teams after his years at the Air Force Academy.
“I’ve been in love with foreign players for a long time because they’ve been there for a long time and they’ve been really good for a long time and nobody wanted to believe it,” Popovich said. “The first thing I did (when he got to San Antonio) was ask Bob Bass, our GM if I could go to Europe and find some players.
“He said yes and it might have been ’88. I can still remember it, Cologne, Germany, and the World Championships. I walked into the food room and there was one other coach in there – Don Nelson. I didn’t know Nellie then. And that was it. There was no other general manager, no head coaches, no assistant coach, nothing. I felt like a kid in a candy store.”
That’s where Popovich’s start in the globalization of the game started.
He was heartbroken when he found out that Sarunas (Marciulionis) had already made a deal with Nellie to join the Golden State Warriors.
“To see Pau here, Tony here. And to see Dirk obviously. It’s a lot of fun,” Popovich said.
With Giannis Antetokounmpo of Greece, Nikola Jokic of Serbia and so many other Europeans now dominating NBA games, Nowitzki, Parker and Gasol all can claim to have set the roots in good soil to create the NBA of this generation.
“We can be very proud of having taken the international game to a higher level,” Gasol said. “It’s very special to share this moment with Dirk, with Tony. It’s remarkable. Things do change. Things do improve. It allows a little boy or girl to dream. And that’s exciting.”
Twitter: @ESefko
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