By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
When the Mavericks (26-36) take over the Los Angeles Lakers (19-44) tonight, Dirk Nowitzki will need 20 points to join Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387), Karl Malone (36,928), Kobe Bryant (33,643), Michael Jordan (32,292) and Wilt Chamberlain (31,419) as the only players in NBA history to score at least 30,000 points.
Still, the early years in the league were so tough for Nowitzki that he thought about bailing out and going back to Germany.
“I felt bad for the kid, for one,” said Michael Finley, a teammate of Nowitzki from 1998 to 2005. “Coach at the time put a lot of added pressure on him, calling him the rookie of the year. That goes around the league for everybody out there to prove Nellie wrong and to go at Dirk.”
Nowitzki eventually silenced his critics to the point where he became a 13-time All-Star while leading the Mavericks to the 2011 NBA title.
“I think the most important thing that he means to the city of Dallas is that he gave them a championship,” Finley mentions on NBA.com. “No matter what you saw, the bad days in the 1990s or the pretty good days in the ’80s, at the end of the day he brought Dallas a championship.
“And because of Dirk’s willingness to sacrifice whatever it takes for the team to be a champion, he will always be remembered as the player that brought Dallas its first NBA championship.”