THE GREAT NOWITZKI

How a skinny German kid became one of the best basketball players of all time.

In a book translated and “edited with an American readership in mind,” journalist and novelist Pletzinger explores the improbable emergence of Dirk Nowitzki (b. 1979) as an NBA superstar. The author follows Nowitzki’s early development in the town of Würzburg, his experiences in international basketball as an adolescent and young man, and his 21 seasons as a member of the Dallas Mavericks (he retired in 2019). The author had extraordinary access to Nowitzki during the last few years of his career, and he presents much of the material as a firsthand observer who often traveled with the Mavericks and was as much a fan as a journalist. This vantage makes possible some intriguing behind-the-scenes commentary, as in the extensive discussions of Nowitzki’s intense and sometime unorthodox training methods or his unguarded reactions to assorted highs and lows during his final years as a player. Pletzinger also draws on a host of insider contacts, including other NBA stars such as Steve Nash and Peja Stojaković, to fill out his descriptions of his subject’s impact on the game as one of the first 7-footers who could move with agility and shoot extremely well. However, the author’s enthusiasm for every detail of his subject’s professional life occasionally feels maudlin and tedious, and the narrative meanders inexplicably in the last 100 pages or so. Though the eccentric philosophizing of Nowitzki’s longtime coach and mentor, Holger Geschwindner, is summarized at some length, credible insights into “the meaning of life,” as promised in the book’s subtitle, remain elusive. Still, Pletzinger makes a strong case for Nowitzki’s status as a transformative player. Nowitzski, he writes, “revolutionized his position….He shot the ball better than anyone else his size. He changed his sport—basketball after Dirk Nowitzki is a different game than it was before him—more variable, smarter and more creative.”

A meticulously observed, impassioned assessment of Nowitzki’s significance as a basketball player.