On Feb. 25, 2019, the LA Clippers hosted the Dallas Mavericks at what is presently known as Crypto.com Arena. Nine seconds remained in the Clippers’ 121-112 victory, when then-Clippers head coach Doc Rivers called a timeout, walked to the scorer’s table and grabbed the public address announcer’s microphone. He urged the hometown crowd to rise and pay tribute to Dirk Nowitzki, “one of the greatest of all time,” with a standing ovation.
“I know it really touched Dirk,” then-Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle said after the game. “It’s great for our young guys to see a moment like that, because it’s just another nod of how special Dirk is to not only our franchise but to everybody that follows our game.”
The first person to greet Dirk during the ovation was a 19-year-old Mavericks rookie, Luka Dončić. When Carlisle spoke about how great it was for the “young guys” to witness the moment, Dončić had to be at the top of the list.
Mavericks fans have spent this past week trying to cope with, and make sense of, the insensible. They’ve grown distraught over the stupefying trade that sent Dončić, ironically enough, to Los Angeles, where the Crypto.com Arena crowd will now shower the 25-year-old Slovenian superstar with love as one of their good guys and the next Lakers great.
To some, the emotional reaction by Dallas fans may seem excessive. A funeral — coffin and all — in front of the arena?A shrine of Luka next to Dirk’s statue, filled with posters, notes and jerseys? Protests in the city? A campaign to admonish Mavericks ownership and general manager Nico Harrison by purchasing a billboard?
It may seem like an overreaction to a basketball transaction, no matter how unprecedented it is in nature. But to gain a full understanding of the strong reactions to Dončić’s exile, one must understand the unique basketball culture in Dallas.
It’s one that centers around Nowitzki.
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I was a 3-year-old living in a Dallas suburb when the Mavericks drafted Dirk in 1998. I spent six seasons covering the Mavericks, from 2015 to 2020. Until 2019, I had never known what basketball at the highest level looked like without Dirk. But his impact isn’t reserved for a certain generation or age group. Quite literally, Dirk Nowitzki was the Mavericks.
When Doc gave Dirk that moment in Los Angeles, it wasn’t just about the numbers. Yes, being an NBA champion, a 30,000-point scorer and a basketball revolutionary was all part of it. But another part was Dirk’s story.
The base of Dirk Nowitzki’s statue at American Airlines Center says it all. (Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
Nowitzki didn’t just play in the NBA for 21 years. He did all of it in one city. He did it in Dallas.
Throughout the Dirk Era, time and time again superstars said “no” to Dallas’ pursuits. Dwight Howard. Carmelo Anthony. Deron Williams and DeAndre Jordan when they were in their prime. But Nowitzki always said “yes” to Dallas — often for lesser pay. For 12 years in the NBA, despite being one of the game’s premier players, a championship eluded him. After heartbreaks like the 2006 NBA Finals and the 2007 first-round loss to the Golden State Warriors, Nowitzki could have gone elsewhere to pursue his best chance to win a title, but he didn’t. He stayed in Dallas and reached the mountaintop with the Mavericks in his 13th NBA season.
There’s a reason that at the base of his statue, the motto reads, “Loyalty never fades away.”
Dirk was loyal to Dallas. Dallas was loyal to Dirk.
In Nowitzki’s final few seasons, it was painfully clear that the end was near. His effectiveness waned, as did his health. The Mavericks went 24-58 during the 2017-18 season. Nowitzki averaged only 12 points per game, his lowest-scoring output since his rookie year. He would come back for one more season, but most people around him anticipated that it would be the last. That summer, the Mavericks got the lottery luck they needed, and the franchise brass consisting of governor Mark Cuban, general manager Donnie Nelson and Carlisle as head coach made a draft-day deal with the Atlanta Hawks to land Dončić.
Nowitzki, never one to let his ego get the best of him, rolled out the red carpet for Dončić. Knowing how tough his transition from Europe to Dallas was some 20 years ago, he opened himself up for mentorship, though he repeatedly stated that Dončić didn’t need it. On the other side, Dončić adored Nowitzki.
Media day that season featured many pictures of the two together, laughing, joking, bonding. In Nowitzki’s final home game, he gave the basketball world one last showcase at American Airlines Center. When he splashed a 3-pointer three minutes into the game, Dončić ran back, beaming with a smile, both his hands in the air, sporting Nowitzki’s two-finger-one-thumb celebration for 3-pointers.
— Luka Doncic (@luka7doncic) May 26, 2021
Nowitzki was always quick to say that Dončić was far ahead of where he was when he came to the NBA. With every passing game, and every passing season, Dončić proved that to be true. He did things on the court that Nowitzki had never done, from his downpour of triple-doubles to scoring 73 points in a game last season, among many other things. Nowitzki carried himself in an authentic, aw-shucks fashion, whereas Dončić was brash. He would hit a game-sealing 3-pointer in your face, then let you hear about it.
Off the court, though, Dončić adhered to a lot of the traits he inherited from Nowitzki during their one-season crossover. When Dončić says, as he did in his first news conference as a Laker, that “loyalty is a big word” for him, people should believe him. When he says, as he did in his farewell note to the Mavs faithful on social media that “I thought I’d spend my career here,” people should believe him.
He witnessed, and was influenced, by a living embodiment of that.
Dončić embraced everything that came with playing for the Mavericks. He embraced the fans. He embraced the city.
In return, the fans and the city embraced him back.
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When many Mavericks fans say that winning a championship — even multiple — now won’t hit the same as even one title would have hit with Dončić, they speak from experience. Many Mavericks fans would take their one Dirk-led championship in 2011 over a couple of titles won by an imported super team that didn’t feature him.
Over the past seven seasons, Mavericks fans made a real investment in Dončić. Some of it was financial and mental, but the bulk of it was emotional. They didn’t enjoy coming up short of an NBA title in recent years, but they understood that it was part of the journey. The fans understood patience, because they were here in 2011. They had seen how sweet the reward could be, both for the trophy case and the storybook.
Dončić’s career in Dallas didn’t exist in a vacuum. He was an extension of what professional basketball had become in Dallas under Nowitzki. For Harrison, it may just be about the trophy case, but for a vast majority of Mavericks fans, it includes more.
As Dirk taught the fan base, the journey and the story make a big difference. Pulling the plug on Luka isn’t just washing away Mavericks fandom going back to his 2018 arrival; it’s washing away what the team fandom had become dating back to 1998.
There’s a level of heartbreaking irony that comes with the Luka shrine at the steps of the AAC being set up next to Dirk’s statue, on a street called Nowitzki Way. That’s where Mavericks fans expected one day a Luka statue would give Dirk company, crossing over forever in Dallas lore, just as they did for one season on the court.
That season Nowitzki and Dončić had together was the passing of a torch. In one baffling stroke, Harrison extinguished the flame of that torch forever.
(Top photo of Dirk Nowitzki and Luka Dončić: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
