The Great Nowitzki: Basketball and the Meaning of Life

Unlike in Europe, the worst teams in the league are not relegated to a lower division—instead, the worst teams receive the right to select the best young players in the draft prior to the next season. This is supposed to keep the league balanced and strong. Every game should be as interesting as any other. But since there is no relegation, there’s

Coaching seems to be in Nash’s future.

“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that makes it good or bad.”

The second day of shooting starts at dawn. The commercial’s plot involves a taxi ride and engages with the rumor that Dirk isn’t capable of withdrawing money from an ATM. Dirk once joked about his mother giving him a daily allowance, and people believed him. He kept telling this story year after year for laughs. And so, they’ve flipped the cliché:

he was a symbol of America’s openness to foreigners. Others saw him as a business opportunity. A way out. A glimmer of hope. For me, he was the realization of an old dream, a kind of surrogate for a life that I and all the other basketball players I knew were never able to live.

Empty gyms are cathedrals of possibility.

This book is not a biography. This book is my attempt to make sense of Dirk Nowitzki.