Dirk Werner Nowitzki (born June 19, 1978 in
Würzburg, Germany) is a German professional
basketball player who plays for the Dallas Mavericks
of the National Basketball Association. An alumnus
of Röntgen Gymnasium grammar school and DJK Würzburg
basketball club, Nowitzki was drafted ninth overall
by the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1998 NBA Draft and was
immediately traded to the Mavericks, where he has
been playing ever since. Standing at 7 ft 0 in (2.13
m), Nowitzki plays the power forward position, but
is also capable of playing other frontcourt
positions like center, small forward or point
forward.
Nowitzki is a seven-time NBA All-Star and seven-time
member of the All-NBA Teams and is the first
European-born player in NBA history to receive the
NBA Most Valuable Player award. He is the first
Maverick ever to be voted into an All-NBA Team and
also holds several all-time Mavericks franchise
records. He led the German national basketball team
to a bronze medal in the 2002 FIBA World
Championship and the silver medal in EuroBasket
2005, and was leading scorer and elected Most
Valuable Player in both tournaments. Regarded as one
of the best European players in basketball history,
Nowitzki was named "European Basketball Player of
the Year" by Italian sports newspaper Gazzetta dello
Sport for five years in a row and voted FIBA
European Basketball Player of the Year in 2005.
Dirk Werner Nowitzki comes from an athletic family:
his mother Helga was a professional basketball
player and his father Jörg-Werner was a handball
player who represented Germany at the highest
international level. Nowitzki Jr. was a very tall
child; most of the time, he dwarfed his peers by a
foot and more. He initially played handball and
tennis, but soon grew tired of being called a
"freak" for his height and eventually turned to
basketball. After joining the local DJK Würzburg,
the 15-year old teenager attracted the attention of
former German international basketball player Holger
Geschwindner, who spotted his talent immediately and
offered to coach him individually 2-3 times per
week. After getting both the approval of Nowitzki
and his parents, Geschwindner put his pupil through
an unorthodox training scheme: he emphasised
shooting and passing exercises, and shunned weight
training and tactical drills, because he felt it was
"unnecessary friction". Furthermore, Geschwindner
encouraged Nowitzki to play a musical instrument and
read literature to make him a more complete
personality.
After a year, the coach was so impressed that he
said to his pupil: "You must now decide whether you
want to play against the best in the world or just
stay a local hero in Germany. If you choose latter,
we will stop training immediately, because nobody
can prevent that anymore. But if you want to play
against the best, we have to train on a daily
basis." After pondering for two days, Nowitzki
decided on the former. Geschwindner let him train
seven days a week with DJK Würzburg players and
future German internationals Robert Garrett, Marvin
Willoughby and Demond Greene, and in the summer of
1994, the 16-year old Nowitzki made the DJK squad.
