As the Dallas Mavericks and Oklahoma City Thunder get ready for Game 2 tonight, there’s one irrefutable fact defining these playoffs so far: Dirk Nowitzki is on another planet right now. If he keeps this going for the rest of the spring, the rest of the NBA may as well just give up.
Dirk Nowitzki Is A Rock Star, And His Playoffs Have Been A Kickass Show
Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks will try to take a 2-0 lead on the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals tonight, and as Dirk gets ready for an encore, the rest of us should appreciate the show. Plus: The Big Hurt, Jerry Jones, what Madonna and a Haitian dictator have in common, and the inspirational tale of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s perseverance. Talking Points is a daily series that looks at some of the best stories in sports (and elsewhere). Read the archives here.
I’ve written a lot about the playoffs this spring, but haven’t really gotten a chance to talk about Dirk. There are a number of tangible ways he’s grown over the years--better passer, more comfortable shooting jumpshots from the post, harder to push him off his spot--but he also just looks different on the court. When Tom Ziller and I went nuts with the debate over “soft” and Dirk’s name came up, Ziller wrote, “He is the same exact player, except his shots are going in and his team is winning.” But I don’t know.
He just seems so much more comfortable. Watching Dirk now is like watching a rock star that’s been touring for years. Someone like Bruce Springsteen, or Bono. They’ve played so many shows--made so many mistakes, learned so many different lessons--that at some point, pulling off kickass shows in front of 100,000 people just becomes a reflex. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but over time, a guy like Springsteen just mastered putting on a big time rock concert.
He’s confident in everything he does on stage. He knows how to picks his spots--when to talk to the crowd, and when to hit another level. He trusts everyone in the E Street Band, and the whole thing just becomes easy. Or it looks that way, at least. And that’s how it looks with Dirk right now.
He trusts himself, he trusts his teammates, He’s mastering his craft before our eyes, and making the game look easy. The craziest part about his 48 points in Game 1 was how little he forced the action. There was no pressing, and not even that much urgency in his eyes. For Dirk, this just comes naturally now. Dominating has become a reflex. Somewhere along the line, it all came together.
Who knows how many more kickass shows Springsteen has left, or how long this nirvana can last with Dirk, but there’s something special happening in Dallas right now. I’m still rooting for OKC, but if you can’t appreciate where Dirk is right now, you might as well stop watching basketball.
Now, let’s get into more Talking Points...
An Outstanding Tribute To Frank Thomas. Because he was so, so awesome in the mid-90s.
I mean really, who didn’t own Big Hurt Baseball back in 1995? And where Ken Griffey gets his fair share of love from everyone that lived through his glory years, it seems like the Big Hurt gets lost in those conversations. An excerpt from the piece over at Pitchers and Poets:
If you want a real demonstration of how pure a hitter Frank was, you can find on YouTube a video of his appearance on the David Letterman program from 1994, during the strike that would end the season. ... To close the interview out Letterman has Thomas take swings at pieces of fruit on a makeshift tee. ... His first swing, at an apple, is a little disorganized. But when it’s finished Frank is laughing pretty heartily. His second swing, at a grapefruit, is a little more in character; bits of exploded fruit come down on the first rows of the audience. It’s the third swing when he looks like he really means it. It might as well have been Charles Nagy throwing out there, not a canteloupe on a piece of plastic. Even Letterman can appreciate the power and exactitude he’s bringing. Watch where the canteloupe hits the plastic shield on the slow motion replay. That thing was headed for the bleachers over the bullpen in left center.
Pretty great. Watch that clip here.
There Were Nipple Rings Pressed Against The Penalty Box Last Night. NSFW NHL!
Jerry Jones Really Is Everything We Hate About Owners. In case you were wondering, the NFL owners are still pretty much full of s**t. Jerry Jones talked to some sponsors before a golf tournament on Wednesday, and had this to say (via Dallas Morning News):
"I expressed the incentive plan that I'm on and the Cowboys are on in this way,'' Jones said. "I didn't spend $1.2 billion to build a stadium and not have the Cowboys playing football in it this year.''
Well, yeah.
When you factor in the $325 million he got from taxpayers and the untold fortune he squeezed from the sponsors he was talking to on Wednesday, he really didn't spend $1.2 billion to build a stadium.
Is CNN Serious? Get tested for STDs like your favorite porn star. (via @DangerGuerrero)
The Horrible People Your Alma Mater Created. Doug at EDSBS is basically screwing with everyone with this piece, so you gotta respect right off the bat. Plus, did you know that Jeffery Dahmer went to Ohio State? That Bernie Madoff went to Alabama? It's all there, including the most embarrassing graduate of all--Nicholas Sparks, the guy who wrote The Notebook and like eighty other of the worst books and movies in human history, went to Notre Dame. He also gave the smarmiest interview of all time:
“I’m going to interrupt you there. There’s a difference between drama and melodrama; evoking genuine emotion, or manipulating emotion. It’s a very fine eye-of-the-needle to thread. And it’s very rare that it works. That’s why I tend to dominate this particular genre. There is this fine line. And I do not verge into melodrama. It’s all drama. I try to generate authentic emotional power. ... I write in a genre that was not defined by me. The examples were not set out by me. They were set out 2,000 years ago by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. They were called the Greek tragedies.”
...says the f’ing guy that wrote THE NOTEBOOK.
Anyway, the whole thing's great, including the comments. And as a few commenters point out, the most embarrassing alumni of all has gotta be Michigan. It's almost surreal. They've got the Unabomber, Dr. Kevorkian, Madonna, Michael Phelps (whether he's good or bad is debatable), Ann Coulter, and then Francois Duvalier, who studied at Michigan for a year and actually makes Jeffery Dahmer and Bernie Madoff look relatively harmless. Wikipedia summarizes "Papa Doc" era in Haiti:
His rule, based on a purged military, a rural militia and the use of a personality cult and voodoo, resulted in the murder of an estimated 30,000 Haitians and an ensuing "brain drain" from which the country has not recovered.
GO BLUE.
The Definitive Clutch Power Rankings. Although that ref should probably be no. 1.
Steve Nash Seems Like A Pretty Chill Bro. He plays on two New York City soccer teams?
Kareem Abdul-Jabaar Does Not Seem Like A Chill-Bro. There’s really nothing to say here, except that it’s kind of surreal to watch one human publicly beg for a statue of himself. On Twitter. Or, more specifically, he’s complaining that other humans haven’t built a statue of him yet, and how that proves the Lakers don’t care about him. And he’s dead serious. An outsider watching all this unfold might be tempted to think sports are completely absurd.
Yes, aren’t we’re all proud that Kareem’s endured this long?
And don’t worry, big man. Lakers fans are exactly as proud of you for enduring this statue-less existence as we are of Magic Johnson enduring HIV. They love you guys exactly the same. Promise.
And Finally, The Rapture Is Coming This Weekend. At Preakness, of course.
See More:
