The NBA has always been a league of comparisons. And plenty of them don’t have much to do with how the game is actually played. Take white players, for instance.
They’re often matched with people of the same skin color. Call it lazy, call it superficial — and at times, you could even call it something more problematic.
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That said, when Bill Simmons made the comparison in January 2002, it landed differently. He was still writing as “The Sports Guy” then and put Dirk Nowitzki next to Larry Bird. Believe it or not, there was something real behind it.
Bill broke it down
Simmons’ observation came in one of his typical Page 2 columns. It was built around a simple idea. The 2001–02 NBA regular season, as he saw it, was full of “juicy plots, subplots and a variety of questions.” So he set out to run through ten of them.
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Near the top of that list — his second point, on the season’s most surprising development — Nowitzki, then in his early 20s and just breaking out with the Dallas Mavericks, suddenly entered the frame.
Simmons was reacting to something that caught him off guard. Veteran coach Hubie Brown had said Nowitzki’s offensive game was starting to resemble Bird’s.
From there, Bill laid out why it wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded.
The jumper that barely grazed the rim, the streaky, white-hot shooting, the soft touch around the basket, the ability to get a shot off from just about anywhere.
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The Ringer founder even pointed to the smaller details. The blond hair. The slightly awkward but controlled stride up the floor. Those were the things that made the Bird and Nowitzki comparison feel real, not just theoretical.
Those early comparisons never really disappeared
Once the eye test had done its part, Simmons went a step further. The Massachusetts native leaned on the numbers. He lined up Nowitzki’s third and fourth seasons with Bird’s.
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The gap wasn’t very wide.
During that stretch, Dirk averaged 22.6 points and 9.6 rebounds per game. He shot nearly 47.5 percent from the field and close to 39.2 percent from three.
Larry, at that same stage, scored 23.3 points a night. The Boston Celtics icon rebounded a bit better at 10.6 a night. He shot 50.4 percent from the field and 25.6 percent from deep.
It wasn’t identical. Close enough to make you look twice, though. This was especially true since Nowitzki had entered the NBA younger, which Simmons also pointed out.
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The numbers matched the flashes. And those flashes stuck, even if there were levels to it, as “The Sports Guy” noted.
“Obviously, Nowitzki isn’t the reincarnation of the Basketball Jesus, but he’s the first player to come along since The Man retired who at least makes me say, ‘Man, he looked like Larry on that play,'” Simmons concluded.
Ultimately, the comparisons were always a hot topic.
Legendary head coach Donnie Nelson later admitted that Nowitzki “wasn’t done any favors” with those.
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Still, by the time the German basketball legend had hit his peak, even Bird came around to it. The three-time MVP said in May 2011 that he could see “a lot of similarities” and that he even “felt honored” by the comparison.
Dirk had passed Larry on the NBA’s all-time scoring list about six months earlier.
Both are Hall of Famers now. They sit among the greatest forwards the game has ever seen.
This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Jun 6, 2026, where it first appeared in the Old School section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.