No one entered this year’s NBA Finals with more on the line than Dirk Nowitzki.
Everyone expects LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to win at least one, if not several championships together in Miami. Jason Kidd had already remarkably led the New Jersey Nets to back-to-back Finals in 2002-03, and now, with his Hall of Fame resume intact, was just a member of Nowitzki’s deep supporting cast, along with Tyson Chandler, Shawn Marion and Jason Terry.
But for Nowitzki, these Finals were everything. A chance to redeem himself from the 2006 Finals, when he and the Mavericks let a late lead in Game 3 – and a 2-0 series lead – slip away and lose the series in six games. He then lost in the first round three of the last four years, including the dramatic upset of the top-seeded Mavericks by Baron Davis and the Golden State Warriors in 2007.
Now, after a brilliant performance through the first three rounds of this year’s playoffs, Nowitzki found himself in a position to forever alter his legacy – something that, after the Mavericks’ recent playoff failures, something that seemed like an impossibility just a couple of months ago.
Of course, Nowitzki managed to do just that, playing brilliantly again throughout the series and leading the Mavericks to their first-ever championship, and one of the bigger upsets in Finals history. So now, with the Finals over – and, unfortunately, with a lockout looming that could wipe out much, if not all, of next season – it’s the perfect time to assess just where Dirk ranks among the greatest players in the history of the league:
By Geography
It’s pretty safe to say that Dirk has established himself as the greatest European player in the history of the league before this title, but the significance of him breaking through and becoming the first to lead his team to an NBA title cannot be overstated. Harvey Araton, the brilliant columnist from the New York Times, made a very compelling argument in a column leading up to Game 6 that Dwyane Wade and LeBron James wouldn’t have poked so much fun at Nowitzki for being sick if he wasn’t European.
The clear myth that a European wasn’t tough enough to lead his team to a championship also was shattered, as Nowitzki stood toe-to-toe with Wade, James and Bosh and took the title they all wanted from them, despite lacking the “second-star” that title teams traditionally have. You have to go all the way back to the 1994 and ’95 Finals, when Hakeem Olajuwon led the Rockets to consecutive titles, to find a time when a transcendent star led his team to a championship without a second great player to rely on (the ’04 Pistons don’t count in this metric, because they had several very good players; you certainly wouldn’t put Chauncey Billups, Rasheed Wallace, Rip Hamilton or Ben Wallace anywhere near Nowitzki’s status).
Among international players, Nowitzki ranks second or third all-time, depending on your definition of a foreign-born player. If you consider Tim Duncan, who was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, to be a foreign player, than he would rank third behind Duncan and Olajuwon. But, either way, that’s pretty good company to find yourself in.
By Position
When Bill Simmons ranked the 96 greatest players in the league’s history in “The Book of Basketball,” which was released in 2009, Nowitzki ranked, in his eyes, as the seventh-best power forward in the history of the league, behind Kevin McHale, Kevin Garnett, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Bob Pettit and Duncan.
In the intervening two seasons, Dirk has made two more All-NBA second teams and, this past season, shot the highest percentage of his career from the field (just under 52 percent) and was the best player in this year’s playoffs, averaging 27.7 points, 8.5 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game.
With this year’s championship now burnishing his credentials, Nowitzki clearly moves past McHale, Garnett, Barkley and Malone, in my eyes. McHale was a great player, for sure, but his career was shorter, and he never led his team to a championship. Garnett did finally get a ring, and he was a heck of a player, but you could never count on him to get you a basket in a clutch situation. Same thing goes for Malone, who never could quite get it done when it mattered.
Barkley might be the most underrated guy of this group – he went toe-to-toe with Jordan in the ’93 Finals, which will always stand out in my mind because it is one of the first series that I vividly remember. And if Kevin Johnson had given him some help in that series, Barkley’s Suns may well have won it, and who knows where he’s ranked on this list.
But, at the end of the day, he didn’t win a ring, and Dirk did. That’s the dividing line between the two of them.
I actually would put Pettit behind all of these guys. He had a terrific career, to be sure, but he falls into the same category as George Mikan – fantastic players when they played, but if their careers started five years later, they simply don’t have the same impact that they did when they played.
So that leaves Duncan, and Dirk doesn’t have the overall resume that Duncan has. Duncan won four titles – and was his team’s best player each time – won two MVPs, and was considered a top five player in the league for a solid decade (from 1998 through 2008). He may be tailing off now as he’s reaching his mid-to-late 30s, but that doesn’t change what he’s done throughout his career.
Still, ranking as the second-best power forward of all-time isn’t too shabby, either.
Overall ranking
There’s a clear group that Nowitzki is a level below, consisting of the following players (in no particular order): Jordan, Larry Bird, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson, Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal and Moses Malone.
But after those 13 players, you can make a strong case for Nowitzki against any of the next group of players: John Havlicek, Elgin Baylor, Julius Erving, Isiah Thomas, Scottie Pippen, Wade and James.
Nowitzki is ahead Wade and James at the moment. However, I’d say both Wade and James will end up passing him down the road – assuming they do what we all think they will in Miami, and Nowitzki doesn’t get any more rings. But that’s a different argument.
As for the remaining players – Havlicek, Baylor, Erving, Thomas and Pippen – Nowitzki ranks ahead of all of them but Baylor. Erving, despite their vastly different styles, is a lot like Nowitzki, in that both came up short plenty of times in the postseason. But he never led an NBA team to a championship, so I put Nowitzki ahead of him.
The closest choice is between he and Pippen. But, at the end of the day, I give the edge to Dirk because he led his team to two separate trips to the Finals, as well as winning a title. Pippen is one of most interesting players I have ever seen, and I always enjoyed watching him play, but in his one big shot to lead the team after Jordan left, he couldn’t get past Patrick Ewing’s Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, whereas Nowitzki led his team to the Finals twice, and won a title.
That would put Nowitzki around 15th all-time, or at least comfortably in the top 20, depending on how you would personally rank that second-half of those top 20 or so players. But there’s no question that Nowitzki has earned his place in that rarified air after one of the most impressive postseason runs in the last 20 years.
Not bad for a guy who, six weeks ago, was considered to be one of the sport’s perennial underachievers on the biggest stage.
