In Honor Of Dirk Signing What May Be His Last Contract Ever, Let's Relive His Greatest Moments

I said this a few months ago when the news first broke that Dirk wasn’t planning on hanging them up and I’ll say it again here. Dirk Nowitzki is a goddamn legend, and it is simply not possible to hate the man. Not only was he a monster on the court, but he was that rare superstar that always seemed to sacrifice year in and year out so that Cuban could help build around him. That in and of itself is rare for a player of Dirk’s caliber, but then you add it to the fact that he’s going to play 21 years for the same franchise, something we won’t ever see again in my opinion, and there’s even more reason to celebrate him.

So when this summer rolled around and it came time to figure out who the Mavs were going to sign, of course Dirk immediately opted out so that the team could have as much room as possible to bring in talent. There was never any doubt that he would return to DAL, and for just $5M Dirk continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Even at his age, he is by no means washed up and could definitely get more than $5M on the open market. I mean he did shoot 41% from deep lat year on nearly 2 3PM a night. But instead he chose to stay with the only franchise he’s ever known, and that will always be cool to me. Cuban talked about how they made the trade on Draft night and then went after DeAndre Jordan because he felt he owed it to Dirk to do everything he possibly could to get back to competing in what is most likely his final year.

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I’m also not looking over the fact that Cuban and Dirk clearly have some sort of wink wink thing going on here. He played on a 1/$5M deal last year as well, and has always found ways to be creative with his salary by giving back. Did you know he went from $22M in 2013-14 to $7.9M in 2014 and $8.8M in 2015? Or that in 2016 he went back up to $25M in only to take 1/5 of that last year. What superstar player are we seeing also do stuff like that? You could probably list them on like 3 fingers. There is definitely some sort of post retirement massive payment going down. Dirk may be like a $200M international scout for the Mavs or something. I certainly wouldn’t put something like that past Mark Cuban. So given the fact that this will probably be the last contract Dirk signs, why not kill some time and relive some of his best career moments. A sure fire HOF talent and one of the best international players ever, it has truly been awesome to watch Dirk play basically my entire basketball watching life. As someone who never really cared one way or the other about the Mavs, I am someone who appreciates basketball history, and Dirk for sure has left his mark on that.