Dirk Nowitzki will be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday at Springfield, Mass.
As he enters his enshrinement week, we will bring you some stories about the greatest Maverick of them all.
In today’s installment, we take a look at Nowitzki’s biography The Great Nowitzki: Basketball and the Meaning of Life, by Thomas Pletzinger.
Along about the time Dirk Nowitzki was 14 or 15, he wasn’t a well-known basketball player.
In fact, he barely drew any notice outside his circle of family and a few friends.
But the seed of greatness was already there, ready to germinate.
It’s at that time that Holger Geschwindner, a German basketball savant who played in the 1972 Olympics and for many years professionally in Europe, had a sit-down with Nowitzki’s parents: Helga and Jorg-Werner.
At that time, the parents knew their son was a gifted basketball player. They had thought they were shooting for the stars as they felt he could be the best player in the German League.
To which Holger told them: “If Dirk wants to become the best player in Germany, we can stop training immediately.”
But to be the best in the world? It would take more. It would take commitment. And in Nowitzki, Geschwindner found a pupil with unwavering commitment.
Back stories like that are what make Nowitzki’s captivating book so much fun.
The meat of the book really encompasses the whole book. It’s a cradle-to-grave trip through Nowitzki’s basketball career. We learn how and where he met Geschwindner.
We learn about his development.
And we learn about the human side of Nowitzki, a side that he protected throughout his 21 years as the face of the Mavericks.
One of the constant themes of the book is the correlation of music to basketball. Specifically, of jazz to basketball.
Most Maverick fans know that Nowitzki learned to play the saxophone when he was young – at the behest of Geschwindner.
But the connection to music goes far deeper.
As one of Nowitzki’s early coaches who had doubled as a Jazz musician would say: “Mistakes are the salt in the soup. When you hit a bad note, the next one decides whether it was good or bad.”
This is where we learn what generationally talented people already know. Mistakes are the building blocks of genius.
Nowitzki made a lot of them. He was a D student at one point before he found out that knowledge carries a certain degree of power with it. And he learned from each and every faux pas.
He would graduate high school on time, with a 2.5 GPA. Not stellar. But not bad, either.
There are other interesting tidbits. We learn of German philosophers and why Geschwindner told every barista at Starbucks that his name was Willie.
And they still never seemed to spell it right.
We would find out that kids in every well-worn gym in Germany wanted to be like him. And Dirk wanted to stay like them.
We learn of some of the rare down times Dirk had. One such occasion was at an all-star weekend in Orlando. He and a few choice friends, and Geschwindner, went to Universal Studios. There, he had a crew take him through back entrances and service areas. Dirk never had to wait in a line.
And he rode rollercoasters until he got sick – and before anybody recognized him.
Mostly, the book pulls back the curtain on what made Nowitzki, Nowitzki.
It covers a wide range of Dirk-ness, including some get-to-know-you moments with wife Jessica and lots of asides that most people would never be privy to.
For instance, we hear of Dirk profusely thanking Mavericks’ vice president of basketball communications for his work and guidance in numerous endeavors, including Nowitzki’s annual summer baseball game that he inherited from the Dallas Stars’ Mike Modano.
Tomlin responds by saying, “No, thank you, Dirty. You’re the one who makes all this happen.”
After the two try to out-thank each other for the next few minutes, Brian Cardinal stepped in and said: “Stop before this becomes a wedding proposal.”
Those are the kind of things that happen behind the scenes and help make Pletzinger’s book a must-read for true Maverick fans.
Twitter: @ESefko
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