Dirk Nowitzki is one of the as-tough-as-nails players in the NBA during his playing days, but the Dallas Mavericks star made a shocking revelation that he was stereotyped as a “soft European player.”
“I think it’s normal,” Nowitzki told Yahoo Sports of being stereotyped as soft in a league that still has flashes of physicality.
“There weren’t that many European players in the league when I first came… I was skinny. I was a jump shooter as a seven-footer. So automatically, that’s perceived as soft… I do remember those stereotypes at the beginning, like I’d be guarding somebody on the wing in front of the opposing bench and all I hear from the bench, like, ‘Go at him, he’s soft!’”
And this flipped a switch. “It motivated me to fill up my body, get stronger, and get a little better on defense and compete a little harder,” he added.
Nowitzki’s numbers and longevity in the league are a testimony to him breaking the stereotype that he was a soft player. In the 20 years he spent in the league and the 1522 games he played for the Mavericks, he averaged 20.7 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 2.4 assists — stellar numbers for a player who was categorized as soft.
This speaks volumes about his mental toughness and serves as the perfect example to the next generation of European players in the modern-day NBA.
Dirk Nowitzki’s Breakout Season In The NBA Came In His Third Year
By his third season in the league, Dirk Nowitzki was consistently averaging 21.8 points and 9.2 rebounds per game, garnering league-wide attention. From his fourth season, his stocks rocketed as he made the All-Star team 11 consecutive times, won MVP, and won an NBA championship and Finals MVP as well.
From 2001 to 2012, Nowitzki averaged a whopping 24.3 points and 8.6 rebounds. He shot 47.8% from the field, 38.3% from three-point range, and 88.7% from the free-throw line and showed that he was a game-changer. There is no doubt that he is one of Dallas’s bonafide franchise legends.
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