Dirk Nowitzki

Dirk Nowitzki
PF/C – 7’0, 245lbs - 40 years old - 20 years of experience

Despite recently having celebrated his 96th birthday, Nowitzki still gets it done on the NBA court. He has had to reinvent himself as he loses the last of his lift, and as the stamina starts to go with it. But that is OK, because he has done so.

These are not ceremonial starts or minutes that Nowitzki is getting. It is true to say that he has lost a fair bit, and that at this point, hiding him is increasingly difficult defensively. Having lost the last of his lateral speed through age and injury, Nowitzki is now only a container on perimeter stuff, and his contests never were the best. Similarly, gone are the days of giving Dirk the ball and letting him score in isolation, through the dribble-drive or through that fadeaway. The small amounts of lift and speed are too small now - a player who was once a much better athlete than he was giving credit for (how many other seven footers ran the court that well?) is now not an athlete any more except in the job title.

Instead, though, Dirk has become the ultimate finisher. It matters not that he needs setting up for everything when he can still hit everything. Re-embracing the catch-and-shoot three-point shot to flank his always-excellent mid-range touch, Nowitzki is an option on every possession for the Mavericks. If the possession isn’t going anyway, give Dirk a catch and he’ll have a good chance of making the shot. It has never been a blockable shot and it still isn’t.

Nowitzki tweaked his game to accommodate the adjusting NBA and his own advancing career. And he’s done it very well.

Player Plan: One year and $5 million remaining via a team option. Entirely up to him what the plan is. By the sounds of it, he’s got one at least more in the chamber, so bring it on.

Dirk Nowitzki
PF/C, 7’0, 245lbs, 39 years old, 19 years of experience

Starting to lose the small yet important amounts of lift that make the turnarounds possible, but can come back and keep trying them for as long as he wants. Would make for an excellent backup to a Barnes/Noel frontcourt, though it is probably not likely.

Player Plan: Has had a $25 million team option for 2017/18 declined, and seems not to want to retire. He is owed money, but another Dirk discount wouldn’t be bad.

The idea of a one-club man is a romanticised ideal in sports, yet one increasingly impossible to achieve in this heightened free agency era. Even Paul Pierce eventually got traded. However, it does occasionally happen, and Luol Deng is one of the few true veterans in this league to have spent his whole career with one team. Indeed, the only players to have been with their current teams longer than Deng has been with Chicago are Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Nick Collison, the Miami duo of Udonis Haslem and Dwyane Wade, and the Spurs trio of Parker, Ginobili and Duncan, while Jameer Nelson and Anderson Varejao are the only other 2004 draftees to have never left the team that first signed them. This kind of longevity, then, is rare - usually, one party is sufficiently disgruntled with the other by now to have moved on.

In re-signing for four years and $80 million with the Dallas Mavericks, Dirk Nowitzki was able to secure himself only the second no-trade clause in the league. The other one belongs to Kobe Bryant. Not many players are eligible for no-trade clauses; to be eligible, a player has to have 8 years of NBA experience, at least four years of which have to have been with the team he's signing with (albeit not necessarily consecutive years). Other eligible players such as Paul Pierce and Tim Duncan could have had them worked into their most recent contracts, but didn't; then again, they didn't really need to. They're not being traded. Not now, not ever.

(The Cliff Notes version of my alternative non-Jamesy plan - sign Dirk Nowitzki for a hell of a lot of money; trade Kirk Hinrich to Orlando for Marcin Gortat and a signed-and-traded Anthony Johnson; sign Roger Mason, Marcus E. Williams, Brian Skinner and Eddie House; draft Xavier Henry, and buy a mid-second rounder and use it on Trevor Booker. But I'm fully expecting Dirk to re-sign with Dallas, as should you. There is barely such a thing as a lifer in today's NBA, but Dirk, Paul Pierce, Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant should be four examples of such. In fact, if they're not, something's gone gravely wrong and people must be held accountable.)