As he prepares for his 18th NBA season, 37-year-old Dirk Nowitzki is willing to do whatever possible to stay fresh and extend his career.
Nowitzki said late last month that he won't consider retirement until at least 2017, when his current contract with the Dallas Mavericks expires. Getting to that point will likely require some diligent workload management, beginning with a basic minutes reduction.
In 2014-15, Nowitzki played 29.6 minutes per game, his fewest since his rookie year. This season, head coach Rick Carlisle is planning to scale that back to around 26 minutes a night, according to ESPN's Tim MacMahon.
"I think we're trying to find a good mix where I don't overwork but I don't get out of shape," Nowitzki said. "I'll try anything at this point and see if it works."
And when Nowitzki says he'll do "anything," he apparently means it. MacMahon reported that Nowitzki has also been doing extensive offseason work with an experimental, tech-savvy Mavericks training staff, running the gamut from "traditional strength and conditioning exercises to biomechanics, GPS monitoring, and even experimenting with electrical stimulation."
Nowitzki explained that the electrical stimulation process, which is designed to activate his fast-twitch muscles without putting any stress on his joints, works using adhesive patches that connect to wires and cover great swaths of his leg muscles.
"Every 20 seconds they contract really, really hard for like three or four seconds," Nowitzki said. "You're like, 'Ahhhhhhhh!'"
Nowitzki has been remarkably durable in his career, ranking 26th all-time (and fourth among active players) with 1,265 regular-season games played. He's missed just seven games in the past two seasons combined.
The Mavericks are wisely taking steps to ensure Nowitzki can continue along that track in his final seasons, though team athletic performance director Jeremy Holsopple is making sure to note that explosiveness will never again be a facet of Nowitzki's game.
"It's hard to do explosive things on an ankle that has zero degrees of dorsal flexion or two of them that have zero degrees of dorsal flexion or a knee or hip that has some arthritic changes," Holsopple said. "So it's finding novel ways to try to get him to work without the pounding."
