Getty Dirk Nowitzki and Mark Cuban embrace each other after Dirk announces his retirement
Dirk Nowitzki is the king of Dallas.
The NBA’s Most Valuable Player in 2007, the German forward is widely regarded as one of the best power forwards of all time and is considered by many to be the greatest European player of all time.
With career averages of 20.7 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.4 assists, Nowitzki was a headliner on the Mavs’ 2011 championship team.
Alongside notables like Jason Kidd, Tyson Chandler, J.J. Barea, Jason Terry, Peja Stojakovic, Shawn Marion and DeShawn Stevenson, the Mavs upset the Big 3 era Miami Heat team that included Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh and LeBron James.
Dallas Mavericks owner, Mark Cuban thinks the world of Dirk Nowitzki. Appearing on the Heavy Live With Scoop B Show, he also debunked a myth about Noitzki. The 7’footer did not take less money during his playing days in Dallas. “People say that that’s true but, it’s not true,” Cuban told me.
“He didn’t take less. What they’re trying to tell you is that if he would’ve opted out — you know how LeBron opted out and signed another contract? So that really wasn’t done ten years ago, right? So Dirk just signed the max contract that was there rather than opting out and doing one at a time. And so that was when people were talking about him leaving money on the table. He could’ve made a few more dollars, but he liked the security of having a long term deal, where LeBron bet on himself more than anything else, right? And so, you can argue that he took 8 million one year and he could’ve got a little more but, we saved some money for free agency so maybe 5-10 million dollar in total. With Dirk, we would’ve done WHATEVER Dirk wanted. And this is the way Dirk wanted it. Nothing but love for Dirk. He is the real deal.”
Cuban’s account makes sense. Nowitzki, 43, retired from basketball in 2019 and in an interview with Cuban in 2016, the Mavs billionaire told me that he took care of Dirk. “Dirk wasn’t even in the country and people couldn’t even reach him when free agency started,” Cuban told Scoop B Radio.
“I basically told him, look, you tell me the price and it actually started lower. His agent said ‘how about this much’ and we said ‘we’ll have a little more money, we’ll give you more’ and as the numbers started getting bigger and bigger, it was like ‘what about this number?’ ‘We’ll give you more.’ Finally, it was like ‘this is what we got left, take it!’ We wanted to make it a two-year deal with a team option so that people wouldn’t speculate that he was going to retire because Dirk is the type of guy, he’s just a good guy. He would hate going city to city to city and everyone asking him if he was going to retire because he has no intention of retiring after this year and, with the team option that we have, he gave us the flexibility that said ‘if we find somebody that we can send the money to that he likes, we all like, then let’s do it and if not, let’s give the money to Dirk again which I’m fine with too.”