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.<\/p>\n
They’re often matched with people of the same skin color. Call it lazy, call it superficial \u2014 and at times, you could even call it something more problematic.<\/p>\n
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That said, when\u00a0Bill Simmons<\/a>\u00a0made the comparison in January 2002, it landed differently. He was still writing as “The Sports Guy” then and put Dirk Nowitzki<\/a> next to Larry Bird. Believe it or not, there was something real behind it.<\/p>\n Bill broke it down<\/p>\n Simmons’ observation came in one of his typical Page 2 columns. It was built around a simple idea. The 2001\u201302 NBA regular season, as he saw it, was full of\u00a0“juicy plots, subplots and a variety of questions.”\u00a0So he set out to run through ten of them.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Near the top of that list \u2014 his second point, on the season’s most surprising development \u2014\u00a0Nowitzki<\/a>, then in his early 20s and just breaking out with the\u00a0Dallas Mavericks<\/a>, suddenly entered the frame.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n From there, Bill laid out why it wasn’t as far-fetched as it sounded.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n 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\u00a0Bird<\/a>\u00a0and Nowitzki comparison feel real, not just theoretical.<\/p>\n Related: Way before his disaster against the Spurs, Chet Holmgren claimed it would take him two months to become the best NBA player<\/a><\/p>\n Those early comparisons never really disappeared<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The gap wasn’t very wide.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Larry, at that same stage, scored 23.3 points a night. The\u00a0Boston Celtics<\/a>\u00a0icon rebounded a bit better at 10.6 a night. He shot 50.4 percent from the field and 25.6 percent from deep.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n The numbers matched the flashes. And those flashes stuck, even if there were levels to it, as “The Sports Guy” noted.<\/p>\n “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,'”\u00a0Simmons concluded.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the comparisons were always a hot topic.<\/p>\n Legendary head coach Donnie Nelson later\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0that Nowitzki\u00a0“wasn’t done any favors”\u00a0with those.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Still, by the time the German basketball legend had hit his peak, even Bird came around to it. The three-time MVP\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in May 2011 that he could see\u00a0“a lot of similarities”\u00a0and that he even\u00a0“felt honored”\u00a0by the comparison.<\/p>\n Dirk had passed Larry on the NBA’s all-time scoring list\u00a0about six months earlier<\/a>.<\/p>\n Both are Hall of Famers now. They sit among the greatest forwards the game has ever seen.<\/p>\n Related: Ex-Mavericks guard predicted Dirk Nowitzki would be better than Larry Bird: “No way he could have been as good as this kid is going to be”<\/a><\/p>\n This story was originally published by Basketball Network<\/a> on Jun 6, 2026, where it first appeared in the Old School<\/a> section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA has always been a league of comparisons. 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