There’s an argument to be made that Dirk Nowitzki was the NBA’s original stretch-4 and one of the best power forwards in league history.<\/p>\n
Mark Cuban doesn’t believe younger generations see him that way, however.<\/p>\n
“I think while he was playing he was acknowledged because he was hitting all these milestones. The championship, 20,000 points, 30,000 points, the number of All-Star Game appearances. When he was playing, people truly appreciated him,” he told Boardroom’s Rich Kleiman (11:00 mark) on Thursday. “Now, he’s appreciated in Dallas because of all the things he does in the community, and true Mavs fans remember and love him, they see the statue in front of the arena. <\/p>\n
“But outside of Dallas, it’s almost as if younger fans don’t really understand the impact he had on the game. His ability to come in a change a game, his ability to shoot and score and rebound and do all of the things he needed to do to win. Ten straight years of 50-plus wins. That’s unheard of in this day and age. And yet, kids\u2014unless you’re in a highlight film or on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube videos, you’re not truly appreciated any longer. And that’s not just Dirk, that’s Patrick Ewing, guys we all really, truly loved and appreciated.”<\/p>\n
Nowitzki, 47, is a Hall of Famer for a reason. He was a 14-time All-Star, one-time MVP and one-time champion. His 31,560 points are the sixth most in NBA history, and his 1,522 games played rank fifth.<\/p>\n
His place in NBA history is secure, even if he hasn’t quite stuck in the collective consciousness among the younger generations like other players of the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s an argument to be made that Dirk Nowitzki was the NBA’s original stretch-4 and one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-168831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}