On the eve of another momentous occasion for Dirk Nowitzki, the greatest Maverick of them all, who never toots his own horn, said he thinks he did, indeed, get one thing right.
He had a feeling years ago that there would be one thing above all others that he would miss when he retired from the NBA.
“I miss the stuff I always thought I’d miss,” he said Tuesday. “The adrenaline of making a big shot, either silencing the crowd – sit down – or making a big shot at home and the crowd’s going wild.
“If I watch a shot now and somebody is making a big play like that, I do get a little bit of the sense that I’m never going to have that feeling again in my life. So that hurts a little bit.”
In that respect, you get the feeling that Dirk’s probably wrong. He’s got more heroic moments in front of him. He just doesn’t know what they are yet.
Nobody does.
But what we do know is that Wednesday night will be an emotional evening when Nowitzki’s No. 41 jersey is raised to the rafters, where it will forever hang next to the jerseys of Rolando Blackman, Brad Davis and Derek Harper.
The ceremony will happen after the Mavericks’ 6:30 p.m. tipoff against Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors.
Nowitzki knows these sorts of events are not just for him. During a 50-minute news conference Tuesday, he made sure to thank not only the coaches and former players and friends and family that helped him become the No. 6 scorer in NBA history, but also the workers behind the scenes.
“It’s unfortunate that the arena is not bigger,” Nowitzki said. “I would love to have a lot more people here. I’m glad somehow they can be part of it on TV or the live-stream (on mavs.com). There’s so many people that were part of this journey. It’s going to be sad unfortunately, that everybody can’t be here.”
Among them are the basketball people that shared Nowitzki’s most triumphant moments, most notably former coaches Rick Carlisle and Don Nelson and former general manager Donnie Nelson.
Nowitzki did not need to be prodded to pay homage to all of them.
“They found me in Germany,” he said of the Nelsons. “Donnie was always there for me, basically for my whole career. He made sure I was welcomed and felt comfortable early on.
“And old Nels, with his philosophy, he helped me tremendously to get going. It was perfect in his system of mismatches and a big guy shooting the ball.”
Nowitzki has often wondered what would have happened if his first NBA coach had been a more-traditional and less-innovative sort than Nellie was.
“They would have put me in the weight room, put on 20, 30 pounds, (made me) play a completely different game,” Nowitzki said. “And maybe things don’t work out the way it ended up. I was really fortunate to play under Nellie and let me play my game and what I was good at. Both guys were a huge part of my career.”
And Nowitzki had a special comment on Carlisle, who left the Mavericks after the 2020-21 season and now coaches the Indiana Pacers.
“I love Rick,” Nowitzki said. “His basketball knowledge was out of this world. His X’s and O’s, attention to detail, he was great. He always supported stuff I did off the court, as well.
“Rick made us champs.”
The interesting part of that quote is that Carlisle has said before that it was Nowitzki that made the Mavericks champions.
But the truth of the matter is that, like virtually everything in the NBA, it was a team effort.
And Nowitzki has will always miss that, just like the clutch shots and the locker-room banter, of which he was a master.
And his wife, Jessica, has learned that locker-room talk is hard to outgrow.
“I’ve had a lot of fun with my teammates,” Nowitzki said. “In a men’s locker room, nothing is off limits. I enjoyed that setting for a very long time. Making my teammates feel comfortable with me joking around with them and not seeing myself as a bigger piece. Those are some of the times I miss.
“Sometimes, I’ll be at home and I’ll say something to wifey, and she’ll say, ‘this is not the locker room.’ So I do miss the locker room every now and then.”
What Nowitzki still isn’t certain about is where the next step will take him in his professional life. He has the title of “special adviser” for the Mavericks. He admitted he’s not sure what that means.
But he does know one thing for certain that he won’t be doing in the future: coaching.
“The special advising came by because I wasn’t ready to be full on board yet,” he said. “I love the Mavs and I want to help. But with little children (at home), I wasn’t ready to fully commit and I’m just not there yet.
“Now, what the future brings, it’s kind of all on the table, I guess. (But) coaching is not in my plans. I think it could be fun working working with individual guys like Holger (Geschwindner) did with me.
“But team coaching? That’s the last thing I want to do, honestly. Standing there holding speeches, motivating guys and they’re on their phone half the time. I don’t have the patience. I barely have the patience with kids. I don’t have the patience to deal with all that nonsense these days. So that one’s out. Other than that, I think all the options are on the table.”
And, in the meantime, there’s the subject of more tributes for Nowitzki. That’s a subject that is only slightly more appealing than coaching to the 7-foot German.
He knows there is a statue out there with his name on it. And the only certainty about what it will look like is that it won’t be Nowitzki in a defensive crouch.
“I can’t give away too much,” he said. “I’ve been involved a little bit. We made a studio visit in Chicago with the artist a few months ago. I think it’s going to be super-cool. It’s going to be a surprise of what it is, what it looks like. But the artist is amazing. He’s going to do a great job.”
And, Nowitzki said, after having a street named after him in front of the building he essentially put on the map, American Airlines Center, and now the jersey retirement, it’s got to end somewhere.
“And honestly, that (statue) has to be the last, last honor hopefully I’m getting. This is a lot. With the street first, and the jersey. And the statue outside. You guys know me. That’s a lot of limelight. But I’m going to enjoy it when it gets that point as well.”
All of this, plus enjoying retirement with his wife and kids, has had a reassuring impact on Nowitzki. He knows now that he called it quits at the right time.
“The second-to-last year, I had so many bone spurs that I could barely more to one side,” he said. “But I played almost 80 games. So I said, ‘Let’s try to get the bone spurs out and get a little more movement in the ankle and that might be better.’
“But it didn’t work that way. I was actually in more pain playing. It took me forever to kind of play myself into shape. So the last two years kind of took some of the fun from it, unfortunately.
“The ankle told me it was time to go.”
And now, in three seasons since retiring, Nowitzki continues to give us thrills and make us appreciate the journey he’s had – and we’ve had with him.
Twitter: @ESefko
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