Thursday, May 5, 2011

The Majesty of German Engineering

Blazer fans who are still butt-hurt over the brutal smackdown Rip City received at the hands of the Dallas Mavericks will have to forgive me for this long, rambling diatribe of admiration and adulation for Dirk Nowitzki, but this is long overdue. Dirk Nowitzki has long been my favorite non-Celtic/non-Blazer player in the NBA (and frankly I probably like him more than half of the Celtics and Blazers I regularly root for), and while I've always enjoyed watching him play I've never tried to verbalize just how ridiculously good at basketball he is.

You'd think it would be hard to overlook a seven footer with three-point range and a godawful haircut, but how many of you nonexistent readers out there knew that Dirk was one of only two NBA players (along with Kobe Bryant) to have a solid decade of 1500 point seasons from 2000-2010? Or that he was behind only Bryant and Allen Iverson for total points scored in the last decade? Or that he's been in the top ten in almost every single statistical category for his entire career, and that he does so with an efficiency that is almost unrivaled in the Association? Or that he's fourth among active players (trailing only Shaq, Kobe and KG) in career scoring? How about the fact that his teams have won at least 50 games for the past eleven NBA seasons? Only Tim Duncan's San Antonio Spurs can boast the same feat as Dirk's Mavs, and Duncan has had All-Star caliber help for his entire career.

The numbers support Nowitzki as one of the all time greats, but beyond his contributions to the stat sheets, the style of his game and the degree of difficulty he imbues into the artistry of his shots in almost unrivaled in the game today. I mean, really, when have we ever seen a seven footer who can outshoot nearly every guard in basketball, finish at the rim with either hand, pass, rebound and yes, even play solid defense the way Nowitzki does. Dirk can score at an elite level in the low-post, at the elbow, beyond the three-point arc either off the catch or off the dribble, and he's done so while facing double teams for his entire career (!). Who else in the NBA can do all of that?

I swear, I will never get tired of watching him create his shot and then splash the net with that silky, high-arcing jumper. Even as he was eviscerating the Blazers for stretches in the first round of the playoffs, I couldn't help but smile every time he worked to create a favorable match-up, did one of his characteristic herky-jerky up & under moves and then jumped and faded away off the wrong foot to rain down another jump shot. There's nothing else quite like it in the NBA, and whenever he gets a switch on the Mavs' patented Terry/Nowitzki pick & roll, you can sense the sheer terror on his overmatched defenders face as Dirk calmly decides which way he's going to score. He could tell you exactly what he's going to do and how he will score and I get the feeling that there isn't a defender alive that could stop Nowitzki from getting the shot he wants.

Dirk Nowitzki is without a doubt the most un-guardable player in the NBA today, ahead of Durant, Kobe, LeBron James and Derrick Rose, and really, it's not even that close. LeBron and Rose can be coaxed into taking too many jumpers that they can't reliably hit (plus LBJ has absolutely no post game, whereas Dirk is among the top 5 post scorers of his generation), Kobe can be worn down and doesn't have the explosion to get to the cup anymore. Durant can be manhandled and muscled out of position in crunch time, and even so he doesn't finish as well with the left hand as Dirk does. Even the best and most complete players in the NBA can't even whiff Nowitzki's virtuosic offensive ability, the man has literally zero holes in his offensive game. He can flat out shoot it from anywhere on the court, and if you crowd his jumper he can take you to the hole going either direction and finishing with either hand. His jumper is safely beyond the reach of even the best shot-blockers in the NBA (he's as tall as anyone in the Association and he fucking fades away when he shoots it), and even if opponents try and frustrate him with length he has the speed and the handle to blow by defenders of that size. Smaller defenders have had success in the past by getting into Nowitzki's body and playing him physically, however you're really just playing with fire at that point since Dirk can either splash the jumper or draw a foul and calmly knock down the free-throws like no other big man in the game today. Not since McHale have defenders looked so lost, helpless and unsure in the low-post, and if the Mavericks should win the title with Nowitzki leading the way, then I agree with Simmons that Dirk will have leapfrogged both Barkley and Malone on the list of all-time great power forwards.

Sure, you can knock his defense a little and point to the collapses of the 2006 & 2007 seasons, but none of that can change the fact that Dirk has been as efficient, consistent and deadly as any player in his era. He seems to be able to pick his spots perfectly, knowing just when his team needs him to score ten in a row and when to simply play the game and work within the flow of the offense. Players with lesser ability than his have tried to do too much on offense and killed their teams, while Nowitzki has just kept on winning with a supporting cast that was as bad or worse than that of any other superstar of his era. Perhaps Dirk didn't quite turn chicken shit into chicken salad the way Jason Kidd did on the Nets in the early 2000s, and maybe KG would have traded his support for Dirk's at some point when he was still toiling away in Minnesota, but Dirk has had as rough of a go as any franchise player and has kept grinding away without complaining, demanding trades or acting like a prima-dona.

Malone had Stockton, and Barkley played with Olajuwon, Drexler, Pippen, Majerle, Kevin Johnson and Moses fucking Malone; Dirk had Nash before he was Nash, Jason Terry and Jason Kidd's corpse to help him win a title. The fact that this year's Mavs team, with its stellar support crew of Terry, Tyson Chandler, a washed up Kidd and Peja Stojakovic and 5'6" whitey JJ Barea is arguably his best team ever says it all. No, he hasn't won a title yet, but Dirk has won more Finals games than LBJ and has consistently waded through the toughest competition in the world and has remained one of the best players of his or any other generation. Make fun of his haircut or his typically German fandom of David Hasselhoff, but as a player Dirk Nowitzki deserves as much respect as anyone in the NBA and is an absolute joy to watch night in and night out. He plays the right way and he's been as good if not better than the rest of his peers for his entire career,he deserves our respect and praise for that.