Dirk talks loyalty between him and @DallasMavs pic.twitter.com/41lKLhGm2N
— NBA TV (@NBATV) February 28, 2017
In an age when players regularly bounce around the NBA, Dirk Nowitzki represents an anomaly.
The 38-year-old big man has spent his entire pro career with the Dallas Mavericks and intends to ride out the next year or so with them.
Nowitzki told NBA TV it's been easy for him to remain loyal to the Mavericks and the fans who've supported him since he was just an unproven kid from Germany in 1998.
"The city kind of took me under their wings even though my first year, I was struggling at times, or a lot," he explained Tuesday. "And the fans were always giving me standing ovations when I came in. It was almost like they were waiting on me, they wanted me to succeed, and so it was easy for me to stay loyal and stay there my entire career."
And boy, did he ever succeed. Nowitzki was named the league MVP in 2007 and led Dallas to its first-ever NBA title in 2011. The future Hall of Famer also took hometown discounts so the team could try to remain competitive.
It helped that Nowitzki built a strong relationship with team owner Mark Cuban, who's not only backed him from a financial standpoint - having awarded him a $50-million "legacy deal" last summer - but also in other ways, like recently forcing the deletion of a mean tweet about the 13-time All-Star.
