| 24 May 2011
Teams win championships, but as legacies go, those championships are often just tools to define individual careers. The careers that matter the most are those not just of the most transcendent players, but of the all-time champions. Jordan, Kobe, Magic, Russell. The rings are the final decider of greatness when comparing these men and sometimes the main topic of conversation when their names are brought up. By the time a career is over, men are thought of as champions or they aren't. It has been made that simple, somehow. A binary: you won or you didn't. Dirk Nowitzki's best shot at a ring was thought to have come in 2006, when his team let a 2-0 lead slip away in the Finals against the Miami Heat. Two 1st-round exits followed and the plot had been established – Dirk Nowitzki was set to be an all-time loser. Soft, unclutch, European, Dirk was the perfect scapegoat for daytime radio pundits and casual fans. He didn't have the will or the heart to win a ring.
But Dirk Nowitzki is using these playoffs to modify his page in NBA history. One last great shot at altering his legend. Before a speeding train towards the land of tragic basketball heroes the likes of an Elgin Baylor (is it blasphemous to put the two in the same lengthy sentence?), Dirk now seems to be carving a steady path towards another shot at the one ring.
His playoff stats look like this: a PER second only to Chris Paul in these playoffs, TS% at an astronomical .627, usage rate is at an all-time playoff career high and he keeps coming up with play after play after play to keep his Dallas Mavericks team winning playoff games. The only men to play at such a level of efficiency over the course of 10+ games in a single playoff season were Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Kevin Johnson. Dirk Nowitzki and Hakeem Olajuwon are the only men to do it twice in their careers. And Dirk is doing it with a higher usage rate than any of those other past playoff greats.
In Game 1 against OKC, Dirk became the first player in playoff history to score 48 points on only 15 shots (with only 2 turnovers) in a virtuoso performance that seemed to bring the entire game to a standstill—perhaps because he shot and made 24 freethrows.
In Game 4, down 15 with 5 minutes to play, Dirk led to Mavericks back with yet another legendary offensive performance.
The Scene
With the Mavs (again, down 15 points) going into a timeout with five minutes remaining in the game (one in which they have trailed from wire to wire), a 2-2 tied series going back to Dallas seemed inevitable. The OKC bench was rocking (as it always seems to be) and there was talk of Nowitzki's lack of 2nd half aggressiveness and the Mavs' poor rebounding. Then, the run that would wash away all Dallas sins began. Shawn Marion and Dirk drew James Harden's 5th and 6th fouls (also draining three free throws in the process), Jason Kidd followed with two free throws of his own after the two teams exchanged sloppy turnovers and Dirk went to work with the lead down to 10 points:
13-foot jumper, 24-foot 3-pointer in transition, 14-footer, a wild leaning one-hander as he was probably fouled 3 different ways by Nick Collison and the lead is down to 3, all of this interspersed with the forced 3-pointers, missed opportunities and sloppy play down the stretch we've come to expect from the young Oklahoma City Thunder. A missed Sefolosha three from the corner that might have sealed Dallas's fate led to two clutch Dirk Nowitzki free throws as Nick Collison became so desperate to stop Dirk that he fouled him before the German even had a chance to look at the rim. The 17-2 run had been capped.
Dirk's numbers in the last 5 minutes of Game 4: half of the Mavs' 24 4th quarter points on 4 of 4 shooting from the floor (3 of 4 from the line), a rebound and probably a hell of a lot of luck.
Another directionless OKC inbounds-play eventually took us to overtime, where Jason Kidd sealed Oklahoma City's fate with a late 3 as Oklahoma City continued to struggle on offense, scoring only 4 points in the overtime period. But the narrative doesn't belong to Dallas's ability to force turnovers (or allow OKC to stumble into bad plays, in some cases), nor Shawn Marion's excellent defense on Kevin Durant nor that last Jason Kidd 3-pointer.
The narrative belongs instead to the 7-foot German who was supposed to be too soft to grind his way to a comeback like this one. A man that was supposed to fade into oblivion after his chance at a championship in the 2006 Finals. Yes, he's had his defensive struggles and was a part of the trouble on the boards for Dallas in Game 4. But this time, against all reason, he led the Mavericks to the comeback victory. This time, the would-be tragic hero was just the hero. And he isn't done.
| Next > |
|---|
