The ultimate goal for any player is to win the NBA Finals. It isn’t an easy thing to accomplish as more players will never win a championship playing in the league than there are that will win it. One of the players who were lucky enough to win one during their career was Dirk Nowitzki.
Nowitzki played his entire 21-season career with the Dallas Mavericks and experienced it all during his career. He lost one NBA Finals, in 2006 against the Miami Heat before winning it all in 2011, again against the Heat.
But, that second title with the Dallas Mavericks almost didn’t occur. Dirk Nowitzki knew that he wanted to spend his career in Dallas, but he was unsure he would ever win a championship if he stayed with them.
“While I played, I obviously wanted to finish my career here, so the only time I thought about was pre-championship,” Nowitzki said. “When we didn’t win it, we didn’t win it, that was 10-plus years in the league at this point, and I was thinking, ‘am I going to win a championship here? Or am I going to go somewhere?”
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In 2010, Dirk Nowitzki entered free agency with a chance to change teams. He recently revealed that he was recruited hard by Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers and Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns.
“I remember Kobe (Bryant) tried to get me to come to L.A. at some point, and (Steve Nash) was reaching out to me at some point,” Nowitzki said. “But then I signed that four-year deal.”
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Turning down overtures from those two great players could not have been easy. They were consistent contenders in the Western Conference and combining with Dirk Nowitzki could have been enough to put either team over the top.
The Dallas Mavericks ended up winning the championship in the first season of that four-year deal, officially putting an end to an inkling of wanting to play elsewhere. The 21-year career that he had with the Mavericks is the most ever with one franchise in NBA history.
