Dirk Nowitzki
Dirk Nowitzki
Dirk Werner Nowitzkiis a German professional basketball player for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association. An alumnus of Röntgen Gymnasium and the DJK Würzburg basketball club, Nowitzki was chosen as the ninth pick in the 1998 NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks and immediately traded to the Mavericks, where he has played since. Listed at 7 ft 0 in, Nowitzki is considered one of the greatest power forwards in basketball history...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionAthlete
Date of Birth19 June 1978
CountryGermany
It's hard not to get caught up in this race, but obviously, it doesn't matter if you're a one or a four seed if you don't play at a high level. You've got to make sure you're clicking on all cylinders and have everybody healthy. That's really more of a concern than the one or the four seed.
It's two disappointing loses but we can't really hang our heads down because we were right there. We had our chances to beat both of them. We know what we need to do. We still have over 20 games left. We have to improve on both ends of the floor. We'll work harder in practice and be there hopefully be there in April, May and June.
It's kind of hard not to get caught up in the race. You're half a game up, half a game down. There's pressure on every game now.
When he picks off an offensive rebound for us and gets it out, we can set up again and get another chance to score. And it makes the other team continue to work that much harder on defense.
I like our chances on the road, and we're a good road team. We have guys who can hit big shots down the stretch, and we've won big games on the road. It's another good test.
I'm very happy that Holger has been released that's very important to me, especially in regard to preparing for the European championships. I will contact Holger as soon as possible, then we will see what happens.
Their zone was really effective, I thought, in the third quarter. They continued it in the fourth and we finally started making some. I got open a couple times and made some big shots.
We weren't good enough in the fourth quarter. You have to play for 48 minutes against a team like Phoenix. They made shots off of our mistakes. We turned the ball over and you can't do that.
We were really aggressive and we got really good looks. We played pretty decent defense and when we rebounded, we ran. In transition we usually get pretty good looks. We were in attack mode all game long.
We have to do something about our bad starts because it's not the first time it's happened to us all year. Maybe we should get up at 6 o'clock and run around the block.
Two disappointing losses. We can't really hang our heads. We're right there. We had our chances to beat both of them. But we have some improving to do.
We slept through it. They came out on fire and we couldn't hit anything. That's where we lost the game.
There was a lot of hacking going on.
They adjusted and double-teamed me. I've got to do a better job finding the open man. More than anything, we know now we need a little more consistency for longer stretches.