Dirk Nowitzki is one of the greatest players in NBA history. He’s a champion. An MVP. An MVP from the finals. He is 14 times All-Star, 12 times All-NBA and the sixth all-time top scorer in the league. But perhaps the most respected number, or at least the most captivating in Dirk’s career curriculum, is one.
As in, he played for a franchise.
Dirk stayed with the Dallas Mavericks for 21 seasons, and when he won that championship in 2011, it was different from the titles that many of these guys earn by playing musical franchises until they reach a winner. This was a title that the NBA community celebrated as a whole.
The Mavericks, of course, won that title against the Miami Heat in the first season of the infamous Big 3 together. It was one of the most hated teams in history, turning the universally revered LeBron James into a villain. According to his former teammate JJ Barea, Nowitzki was there with everyone else.
“… He hated Miami,” said Barea on JJ Redick’s podcast “The Old Man and the Three”. “He hated LeBron, Wade, Bosh. He will never say that, but he couldn’t take it.”
The implication is that Nowitzki didn’t necessarily hate LeBron, Dwyane Wade or Chris Bosh personally, but that he hated the idea of three All-NBA players taking a shortcut to the championship by reuniting with their cousins, rather than continuing to fight for the good fight as Nowitzki did and continued to do in Dallas.
But the disdain may have become more personal when LeBron and Wade began to openly mock Nowitzki for making it known to the media that he was not feeling well before Game 5, perhaps suggesting that Nowitzki was making an excuse or that he was weak, or maybe that he just wasn’t made for the big stage. Here’s the incriminating video.
Whatever LeBron and Wade’s intention was, they apparently lit the fire under Nowitzki and, by extension, the Mavericks, who in the wake of the video won the next two games to steal the Miami ring finger.
“When LeBron and Wade started making fun of him coughing when he got a little sick … that clip really hurt him,” said Barea. “He will never say that, but he really saw the tape, and that tape hurt him a lot, and it gave him a little more, which he didn’t need, but it gave him a little more to finish them off.”