Dirk Nowitzki posted a tribute to Don Nelson on Sunday. Nelson kept him at power forward through a rookie year in which he averaged 8.2 points on 40.5% shooting.
Dirk Nowitzki addressed Don Nelson's death in a post on Sunday, writing to his first NBA coach. Nowitzki said in June, at the ceremony where Nelson accepted the Naismith Legacy Award, that Nelson jump-started his career and that Nelson's way of hunting mismatches suited his game.
"Nellie… You didn't just draft me. You believed in me," Nowitzki said. "You saw things in my game before I ever realized I could do them. I've said it a million times and I will always say it: I don't think my career could have turned out how it did without you being my first coach and giving me the freedom to play my game. I can only say THANK YOU. For everything. RIP legend."
Mark Cuban posted first. Luka Dončić followed, and the Mavericks put out a team statement before Nowitzki's post went up.
Milwaukee took Nowitzki ninth overall in the 1998 draft, one spot ahead of Boston selecting Paul Pierce, and sent his rights to Dallas. Nelson was the Mavericks head coach and general manager at the time.
Nowitzki, who was 20 and previously with DJK Würzburg, faced a shortened season due to a lockout, reducing the usual 82 games to 50 and delaying opening night to February 5, 1999. He appeared in 47 of these games, averaging 8.2 points, 3.4 rebounds, and 1.0 assist in 20.4 minutes per game. His field goal percentage was 40.5%. During this time, hecklers at Reunion Arena targeted him aggressively.
Nelson still played him at power forward. The key was that larger defenders had to defend him on the perimeter.
The scoring average more than doubled in year two, to 17.5. Nowitzki averaged 21.8 in his third season and Dallas made the playoffs.
Nelson sat Nowitzki for the rest of the 2003 Western Conference finals against San Antonio after a knee injury in Game 3. Nowitzki told ESPN years later that Nelson was protecting him.
"He was just trying to protect me," Nowitzki said.
Nowitzki spent all 21 of his seasons in Dallas. He won MVP in 2007 and took Dallas to the Finals the year before that. He was Finals MVP in 2011, averaging 26 points and 9.7 rebounds in the series and closing it out 105-95 in Miami in Game 6. It is the only championship in franchise history. Nowitzki retired as the top-scoring foreign-born player in league history, and Dallas honored him by retiring his No. 41 jersey on Jan. 5, 2022. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2023, eleven years after Nelson.
Nelson accumulated a 339-251 record in Dallas across eight seasons. Ross Perot Jr. owned the team when Nelson arrived, and Mark Cuban bought it in January 2000 and kept him in both jobs. Nelson resigned during the 2004-05 season and coached four more years at Golden State before retiring in 2010.
