A dagger for detractors since 1998
Nowitzki became a self-made, 30,000-point man with an all but unstoppable fadeaway
ATLANTA— Dirk Nowitzki dominated the NBA news this week when he became just the sixth player in league history to score 30,000 career points. And some thoughts turned to Robert Traylor.
It was the night of the 1998 NBA draft in Vancouver when one of the most lopsided trades in NBA history was consummated when the Dallas Mavericks and then general manager Don Nelson traded Traylor, the No. 6 overall pick, to Milwaukee for Nowitzki, whom the Bucks had taken ninth overall, and Pat Garrity.
Traylor, who passed way in 2011, was basically an NBA footnote, a 438-game career in which he averaged 4.8 points per game, a bust to be sure.
Nowitzki? He may not have highly regarded by many that night but 18 years and 30,005 points later, his Hall of Fame credentials are set in stone and he has become the face of the Dallas Mavericks franchise. “I remember teasing Detlef Schrempf when he first came over, ‘Hey Det, this young German kid’s gonna come over and take your thunder,’” said Raptors coach Dwane Casey, who coached Nowitzki’s German countryman, Schrempf, in Seattle and spent three years in Dallas watching Nowitzki at work.
“‘Ah, he can’t play, he’s no good’,” Casey recalls Schrempf saying. “And guess what, 30,000 points later . . . here he is.
“Detlef was a great player and a great person in his own right but, again, nobody, even his own fellow Germans, thought (Nowitzki) was going to make it.
“He made himself, he put in the work, he’s a self-made player.”
The 38-year-old Wizard of Wurzburg may also possess one of the greatest and unstoppable signature shots in basketball. His one-footed fadeaway is virtually unblockable and Casey agreed with a joke that 25,000 of his 30,000 points might have come from that shot.
“You knew it was coming, the onelegged dagger that he has, but it’s not by happenstance, it’s by putting in the work on that shot,” Casey said.
Raptors forward P.J. Tucker knows firsthand what it’s like trying to keep the seven-footer under control.
“One of the hardest people to guard, I think, in NBA history,” Tucker said. “You can be right in his face and his release is so high it doesn’t even bother him. Trying to block his shot is impossible.
“You see him and he can’t move but he can still give you 20. It’s crazy, unbelievable that he can score that many points.”
History will ultimately judge where Nowitzki fits among the greatest in league history and where he fits on the list of the best non-North Amer- icans to have played in the NBA. If you discount the international players who have been or were trained in the United States before making the NBA — players like the Nigeria-born but University of Houston-bred Hakeem Olajuwon — it’s hard to imagine anyone being ahead of him.