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
The playoffs is all about showing heart and playing together.
We have to find our sense of urgency a little bit earlier. We gave up almost 70 in the first half. It looked like we just went through the motions.
We tried a lot of things that game, but he's just that good.
Right now the best part of my game is my defense. I'm always guarding players who are bigger and stronger so I try to use my quickness.
We never make excuses with injures. We would love to have Josh out there. Same with Devin. (But) we should have won the game with the guys that we had.
Winning 60 is a special season. Unfortunately, we've won 60 twice and been the fourth seed twice.
We were up five and I had the rebound. I don't know what I was thinking. I tried to dribble the ball out of the pack. Then they got a three-point play. Everything kind of went wrong, that could have gone wrong in that last minute.
It's going to be a big game, a fun game. That's about all it is. But there's a big difference in being the first seed and the fourth seed. All we can do is go for it. Even if we should lose, there's a lot of basketball to be played.
It's tough to win games like that. We really got lucky.
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.
That's obviously not the greatest situation, but there's nothing we can do about it. It's a bad time for injuries, but better now than in another month.
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.
We slept through it. They came out on fire and we couldn't hit anything. That's where we lost the game.
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.