Brad Davis, Rolando Blackman and Derek Harper are already where Dirk Nowitzki is headed tonight.
Up in the rafters at American Airlines Center.
Nowitzki will join the aforementioned trio when the Dallas Mavericks retire his No. 41 jersey following tonight’s game against the Golden State Warriors. For Nowitzki, it’ll be a night filled with pomp and circumstance, and also a night Davis, Blackman and Harper all know well.
When Davis had his No. 15 jersey retired by the Mavs on Nov. 14, 1992, he said: “It was really nice. They did it up right. I had a bunch of family and friends who flew in from Pittsburgh. We had a little thing the night before, then the ceremony itself at halftime was really good.
“I just think having family and friends coming in to see the ceremony, and just all the love that I got from the fans and staff and everybody else that was part of the ceremony itself was really touching.”
Davis doesn’t remember much about the morning of his jersey retirement, other than it was a very busy day.
“I think the biggest thing was I had so many people in town I was running back and forth to the airport,” he said. “I don’t think I had really a whole lot of time to think about it. I was just shuttling back and forth to the airport.”
Blackman, meanwhile, had his No. 22 jersey retired on March 11, 2000. His was the first jersey retired by Mark Cuban, who purchased the Mavs on Jan. 4, 2000.
“It was an emotional time,” Blackman said. “It was just a great, great feeling of pride. Just the look on your family’s face and the love and care of your family, and the love and care of your friends and the community was fantastic.
“The community lies within your family, within your friends and within the Dallas-Fort Worth basketball community that supported you all throughout these years. It’s definitely a group thing that’s a wonderful opportunity to say ‘Thank you,’ and have an opportunity to share a great moment that’ll last — I guess, for as long as they have a Mavericks’ basketball team — it’ll last up in the rafters for all-time to come.”
Harper described the day his No. 12 jersey was retired – on Jan. 7, 2018 – as a surreal moment.
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “When you start being honored like that, you never in your wildest dream come up playing basketball thinking about that. When I started playing basketball it never crossed my mind that one day my jersey will be retired. Never.
“I think if you talk to everybody that’s ever had their jersey retired, that’s what they would say. That’s what makes it surreal. I never thought about my jersey being retired, you never think about being in the Hall of Fame one day. You find a sport, you love a sport and you do your best to be the best in that sport. And it goes from there. It takes off. It’s like lighting a fire.”
Harper’s exhilaration from having his jersey retired was tempered shortly thereafter when the unfathomable happened.
“The reason why I remember (the jersey retirement) is because I lost my mother right after my jersey was retired,” Harper said. “So, it’s emotional when you start talking about the seventh and when my jersey was retired.
“January is a spooky month for me. I started reading ‘John I’ every new year since my mother passed, because it gives me strength to deal with the loss of my mother.”
Davis, now part of the radio broadcast of Mavs’ game, noted that he feels extra special knowing that he is the first player in Mavs’ history to have his jersey retired.
“It was a great honor,” Davis said. “I was blessed to be able to have it up there and thankful to the Mavericks for doing it.”
Blackman, now a part of the Mavs’ corporate relations and diversity and inclusion departments, also is thankful that the Mavs showered him with such a remarkable honor.
“From a personal standpoint it was a great and a proud day for my family and for my friends, and also just an opportunity to get together with the Mavs’ fans who had been with me throughout the whole process,” Blackman said. “It’s just tremendous to go through a whole career having the support and being part of a community and having those people come out and make comments and be a part of it as well as my teammates. And definitely the family members and people who helped you get there.
“No one gets to be successful and get on that road by yourself. You always know that as great as you become or things that have happened, that there are people who helped you with the building blocks. And those people came out to really be a part of the special time like that.”
Harper recalls people making friendly side wagers on where or not he would cry during his retirement ceremony, which happened during halftime of a Sunday afternoon game against the New York Knicks
“I never cried, but it was still one of the most emotional moments of my life because I had my family and my friends there,” Harper said. “People that I was close to, people that knew my background, knew how I grew up.
“It’s a surreal feeling. It doesn’t happen to everybody, but more importantly nobody expects this. You don’t expect this, so that’s why it catches you off guard.”
Davis, Blackman and Harper all agreed that Nowitzki’s incredible basketball journey — from Germany to the United States – and the numerous lives he’s touched on and off the court along the way will likely make for a very emotional ceremony tonight.
“As great as he’s been playing basketball for the city, all the things that he’s done, I’m sure that he’s going to have just a ton of people in from Germany, friends and everything else,” Davis said. “It’s really going to be a special night.
“I’m so excited. I’m ready to see all the stuff that goes along with it and watching his jersey go up into the rafters.”
Blackman echoed that sentiment, saying of Nowitzki: “He’s a special guy and a special super human being, a super player and one of the greatest of all time. I got a chance to coach alongside what Dirk was doing not only here, but also with the German National Team and also with the Mavericks.
“I had a chance to see a fantastic player and a fantastic worker and a guy that was a master executor when he got on the court.”
Harper, who now works as an analyst on the television broadcast of Mavs’ games, also watched Nowitzki chop up defenders into itty-bitty pieces on his way to becoming the No. 6 all-time leading scorer in NBA history.
“Dirk will be emotional because, how do you put Dirk’s career in perspective,” Harper rhetorically asked. “You can’t. It’s hard to put his career in perspective. Dirk, All-Star, All-Pro, champion. His situation is totally different than mine, and I had a great career. I’m respected in the NBA, which is all I wanted out of the NBA.
“But Dirk went to a different stratosphere. Dirk is international. Dirk is from Germany. He had an international career. And then you add to Dirk’s legacy, social media. You add Twitter and you add everything else to it. He changed the game. He deserves everything that comes his way. Everything that you see (tonight), Dirk Nowitzki deserves it.”
And as Davis, Blackman and Harper get a brand new neighbor in the rafters tonight in Nowitzki, they think about the many memories that flash through the minds of the fans inside AAC when they look up and see Mavs’ history at its finest.
“I feel proud and I feel great and I feel very good that people get a chance to share when they sit in those seats and they look up and they
see the No. 12 in there and they see the No. 15 in there and they get to see the No. 22,” Blackman said. “And now they’ll see the great No. 41 be a part of the building history of what made the Mavericks the Mavericks, because each and every one of those players up there put a stake in the ground to help build the Mavericks to what this team has become.
“Some of us have our number up there, but there’s more of us also that played a role and played a part that we all know and we all recognize. Each of us can list about nine or 10 guys that had a hand in the building of this Mavericks’ franchise from its inception from Brad (Davis) to coming all the way through now to the great Dirk Nowitzki. Congratulations to a great, great guy in Dirk, and I’m very happy for him and his family.”
Twitter: @DwainPrice
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