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2018 - 2019 Dallas Mavericks: Throw Some D's

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Angry Gorilla
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CBT
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on that bitch     Dirk   Dennis   Doncic   DeAndre   Let's fucking go.   

CBT
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Took the oldest to his first Mavs game tonight. He picked out the GOAT T-shirt and left the building singing halleluka.

Vic Mackey

Vic Mackey 47093

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20 minutes ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

One other note on the Spurs/Mavs rivalry... it was remarkable and almost uncanny how many of those games would come down to the last two minutes. And not just the playoff games either - the regular season games would seemingly always come down to the last two minutes too. When Dallas hired Avery -- one of ours -- it just escalated everything. That rivalry was so intense with so many great games. 

2006 second round series will always be one of my all time favorites. I almost got the same joy of winning that series as I did winning the WCF the next round. The ups and downs in that series and inside game 7 was great. Dallas finally was able to take down big brother after so many failures.

 

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Machinator

Machinator 32099

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1 hour ago, Vic Mackey said:

2006 second round series will always be one of my all time favorites. I almost got the same joy of winning that series as I did winning the WCF the next round. The ups and downs in that series and inside game 7 was great. Dallas finally was able to take down big brother after so many failures.

 

This was one of the great playoff series of the 2000s, and yet doesn't seem to get the fanfare it deserves.

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youdunnf'dup

youdunnf'dup 2147

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2 hours ago, Vic Mackey said:

2006 second round series will always be one of my all time favorites. I almost got the same joy of winning that series as I did winning the WCF the next round. The ups and downs in that series and inside game 7 was great. Dallas finally was able to take down big brother after so many failures.

 

For the longest time, losing that game 7 to the mavs was the hardest sports memory for me to swallow. To this day, I cringe thinking about Manu fouling Dirk for an and one, when YOU GUYS NEEDED 3 FUCKING POINTS. Quite possibly the single dumbest thing Manu did in his hall of fame career. 

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Vic Mackey

Vic Mackey 47093

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5 hours ago, Machinator said:

This was one of the great playoff series of the 2000s, and yet doesn't seem to get the fanfare it deserves.

Most likely due to it was just the 2nd round and gets overshadowed. That was pretty much the WCF. Dallas and SA were the 2 best teams in the West that year. But I think they did seeding a little different back then and they met the 2nd round.

The 2003 WCF could have been pretty great had Dirk not got hurt early in game 3. Still went 6 games, though. Should have went 7 if Kerr didn't shoot out of his mind to end that game. That was a very good team. Mavs/Kings were very fun in those days as well. We played them in the playoffs three straight years.

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Dropout

Dropout 355

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22 hours ago, Mitch Cumsteen said:

I would also be remiss in my Spurs fan thread shitting duties if I didn't note that he went out on a loss to the Spurs, just like most of the other times he lined up against them. 

I would also be remiss in my Mavs fan duties if I didn’t tell you to eabod

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Vic Mackey

Vic Mackey 47093

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6 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

As a Rockets fan who hated Dirk (because he was so damn good), it is truly bittersweet seeing Dirk’s final season. 

Texas Basketball fans have been blessed for a while from the Dream, to the Admiral to Timmy, to Dirk and beyond. Hall of Famers, all of them. 

You forgot the greatness of Shawn Bradley.

 

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Post Oak

Post Oak 20254

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From the Athletic.

Not sure how to spoiler but it's a great read

It started with an impossible question: How do you honor Dirk Nowitzki?

That’s what was asked in an early January leadership meeting within the Dallas Mavericks corporate headquarters, a weekly 10-person gathering featuring heads and directors of the major departments. Ever since the schedule was released, Jonathan Kornblith, the team’s creative and game day director, had circled April 9, the season’s final home game, or four-nine, as it came to be called around the Mavericks offices. They moved up Fan Appreciation Day, which most of the league holds during the final home game, to make sure the evening stayed clear. The working idea was a Dirk appreciation night.

“We had penciled it in for this night,” Kornblith said. “We didn’t want too much scheduled and have to shift.”

Mavericks employees had spent years planning for this moment – mentally, if not physically. “It was just the one thing we had to be prepared for,” Kornblith said, “whether we had a season to prepare or a week.” By early January, with Nowitzki struggling after his return from ankle surgery, a retirement at the season’s end seemed more likely than ever before. Still, there was that impossible question: How do you acknowledge Dallas’ greatest athlete?

Well, it started in that meeting.

Mark Cuban provided the initial parameters: “They just had to celebrate Dirk,” he said. Because Nowitzki had purposefully avoided announcing anything, the Mavericks were careful not to do it for him.

“There’s nothing wrong with celebrating 21 seasons,” said Jerome Elenez, the team’s chief marketing officer. “We went into it knowing if he said, ‘Hey, I’m having so much fun, my ankles are getting better, my knees are feeling good, I want to come back for one more,’ then we would celebrate 22 (seasons next year.)”

Cuban encouraged ambition. “Don’t think small, think as big as you can with this,” Elenez recalled him telling them. “He inspired us, he lit the fuse, and we just went to work.” Still, this celebration could be anything. Kornblith revisited Derek Jeter and John Elway’s retirement ceremonies for inspiration. One early idea was an elaborate commercial script inspired by this Elton John Christmas advertisement that would have used multiple actors and sets while warping backward through the major milestones in Nowitzki’s career. But that idea hinged on corporate sponsors, and they eventually backed out, likely because of Nowitzki’s uncertain retirement plans.

“You’re putting together this thing that’s nebulous, that’s just this amoeba,” said Mike Marshall, the team’s director of digital media. “It’s to honor the greatest athlete in Dallas sports. What does that look like? What does that mean?”

Finally, that started taking shape midway through February when Cuban recruited Lara Beth Seager, a prominent event coordinator who has worked with dozens of national brands, as well as Nowitzki’s charity events over the past decade. Seager began by working with Cuban on the marketing, and that campaign became 41.21.1., signifying Nowitzki’s NBA-record 21 seasons with a single franchise.

“When Lara Beth got heavily involved, that’s when it was, ‘We’re going to do a 30-minute post-game show,’” Marshall said. “That’s what it changed. It was, ‘Holy shit, we’re manufacturing something out of nothing.’”

On the afternoon of March 19, the Mavericks landed in Portland and Nowitzki went straight to the headquarters of Nike, famously one of his only two corporate sponsors. While there, Nike representatives filmed Nowitzki naming his most important basketball inspirations growing up. He listed six: Charles Barkley, Scottie Pippen, Larry Bird, Shawn Kemp, Detlef Schrempf and Michael Jordan.

The post-game ceremony on April 9 was for the fans, but only partially. “Really, this was our opportunity for us to say thank you to Dirk,” Kornblith said. Those working on this wanted to surprise Nowitzki, and bringing in those legends became how, while also becoming the centerpiece of the team’s ceremony.

The team had connections, as did Seager. Rick Carlisle, for example, who has known Bird for decades, was asked to call him about attending this ceremony. Jordan, the only name who ultimately didn’t attend, either declined or wasn’t contacted, since it was known he wouldn’t pick between Nowitzki’s final home game and Dwyane Wade’s the same day. Even then, getting the five legends that they did felt miraculous.

“I don’t know how that came together so quickly,” Marshall said. “That’s Lara Beth’s thing. I don’t know how you just send an email, and the next day, Charles Barkley, Detlef Shrempf, Shawn Kemp, Scottie Pippen and Larry freakin’ Bird are there, and they’re locked in, but they were.”

Seager declined an interview request from The Athletic, but said this through text message: “I was honored Mark included me. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. He values and cares about Dirk, he values and cares about the fans and he values and cares about his team. He showed that on April 9. It was an amazing experience for me working with him.”

The video introducing Dirk’s influences fell to Marshall, but Nike couldn’t or wouldn’t send him their own recording. The following week, Marshall stayed late after a practice and asked Nowitzki for the same thing. “Why are we doing this again?” he asked Marshall, who was nervous he might figure it out. But then Nowitzki, unfazed, rattled off the names again.

“That video was one of several that Marshall completed for April 9. The only videos not produced by the Mavericks were assigned to Cash Sirois, the president and CEO of The Well Creative Productions, the company responsible for most cultural media shorts aired at the American Airlines Center over the past decade. “I know my team at The Well Creative basically owe our company thanks to him being cool with us doing in-game videos through the years,” Sirois said.

However, the Mavericks realized they needed Sirois’ help with something else even more significant to the final project. “Our job was to put together a video that explained what 41.21.1. meant,” Sirois said. With the team’s help, they started filming every basketball star and celebrity they could find, having them talk up Dirk’s accomplishments on camera and repeat those numbers.

“We became this stealth SWAT team that at a moment’s notice had to go to, say, Hakeem Olajuwon’s house in Houston to knock this out,” he said. “Basically, we were on call the rest of the season.”

It was nearly a dozen trips, Sirois said, starting at All-Star weekend and extending until season’s end. Not everything worked perfectly, like a planned trip to Los Angeles, which fell apart right when (and because) the Lakers did. They had ambitious ideas for Staples Center and even celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, who once featured Nowitzki on Punk’d. Instead, the Lakers themselves provided a crucial assist, recording LeBron James and Tyson Chandler and passing along the footage.

“I’m so glad we had a part of this project because it made what obviously felt like was the end tolerable,” Sirois said. “That we had this project, all of us, to get us through what was an emotional roller coaster at the end of this guy’s career.”

GettyImages-1126312055-e1548939645478-10
(Photo: Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

The finality became more apparent as the behind-the-scenes production grew increasingly elaborate. Still, no one within the Mavericks organization knew for certain about Nowitzki’s retirement, despite being asked constantly.

“People would ask me, and I would say, ‘Dude, I haven’t heard anything, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you,’” Elenez said. “But we seriously had no idea.”

Those working on the ceremony were too busy to worry about it. “I haven’t responded to texts from friends for months,” Marshall said. This massive project loomed over their usual day-to-day. But no one complained. This was, after all, for Dirk.

“This is how we’re going to be remembered for years,” Marshall said. “Off of this night.”

Cuban was involved heavily early on, but as the evening neared, he asked that non-essential updates stop. “They told you that?” Cuban laughed. “Yeah, because I wanted to be surprised, too. I was like, don’t even tell me.”

Weeks earlier, Cuban had received a giant storyboard with everything planned, down to each timeout. “He didn’t necessarily know the content, but he knew the elevator pitch for everything,” Kornblith said. Kornblith, in charge of the entire game day schedule, made sure that every time out, that every single presentation, whether it was an elaborate video project or just a camera roving around the crowd, celebrated Nowitzki in some manner.

“(Even if we were) just showing the amazing signs we had that night,” he said, “we knew the fans wanted an opportunity to celebrate Dirk.”

Seager, Sirois, Cuban and the Mavericks were responsible for everything planned on that Tuesday night – all but one thing. The first halftime video, though produced by Marshall, only happened because of KoTen.

Tian Gu, known for his artwork as KoTen, is a Mavericks fan from Tianjin, China. For years, KoTen has been sketching and animating Dirk Nowitzki, his artistic muse. “I believe fans should do more for their teams than just watch,” he said in the halftime video. He approached the Mavericks, wanting them to use his artwork. He wanted nothing in return, except the chance to give Nowitzki his drawings when he traveled for the final games. Before that even happened, though, he met Nowitzki by happenstance.

“As we were hashing out our contract (at the Mavericks office), Dirk walks in, and goes over to his little corner and starts signing stuff, as he does every week, his hour-long sit-down-and-sign-things,” Marshall said. “That was awesome (for him).”

KoTen attended Tuesday’s home finale, but he didn’t present his drawings until the following day. When Nowitzki started walking away, holding two boxes filled with KoTen’s handiwork, he stopped and turned around. “Both of these are for me?” Dirk asked incredulously, like a kid might on Christmas.

“(Tian) just wanted to give him this gift, and it just made his world, because he cares for him so much,” Elenez said. “He loved him from afar.”

USATSI_12506627-695x1024.jpg
(Photo: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports)

Tuesday night, according to everyone involved, went perfectly.

“Everybody nailed it,” Marshall said. “Game ops nailed it. Jonathan nailed it. Lara Beth nailed it. The post-game was absolutely perfect. That’s so many spinning plates, it’s almost impossible to pull off.”

That’s almost impossible even for organizations used to this. The Mavericks are not. Kornblith had worked in the league 20 seasons retiring coaches, general managers, broadcasters, and even players, but this was the largest operation he had ever led. He remembered a coworker asking if Tuesday was his Super Bowl. “This was more like a moon landing,” he replied. “I couldn’t think of something that may only happen once in a lifetime to compare it to.”

“You just assume somebody’s going to hit a button wrong,” Marshall said. “It’s not even rust or anything. It’s just – we don’t do that. We don’t do 30-minute shows in the arena that try to keep everybody captivated and not one person leaves. I honestly can’t believe it went like that.”

The involvement of the post-game legends moved Sirois’ 41.21.1. video to halftime, while another Marshall production, one chronicling Nowitzki’s entire career, aired right when the final buzzer sounded. Around the team, the video had become known as the Green Day video, because it was soundtracked by Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life).”

Nowitzki wanted that song attached to any final career retrospective done by the Mavericks, Seager had told them. “I was like, ‘Have you asked him since 2010?’ That’s the oldest high school song since Vitamin C,” Marshall joked. “But it meant something to him, so it meant something to me.” The Mavericks even reached out to Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s lead singer, about a live performance that night, but those talks fell through. Still, everyone approved of Marshall’s final creation.

“I thought there might be pushback on him getting injured in 2003, (or) showing him walking off the court in 2006, but that’s part of his story. You can’t hide from it. It’s part of what made him, him. You can’t leave that out of the video,” Marshall said. “That’s not how life is. That’s not how Dirk is. That’s not how his career played out. (And) everybody got it.”

When that video started playing, even the defeated Phoenix Suns stayed and watched.

The legends had arrived hours earlier, hiding away in the suite behind the scorer’s table and across from Mark Cuban’s. Marshall began playing basketball thanks to Shawn Kemp; “I literally broke my thumb trying to dunk like him in my driveway at age 13,” he said. Never mind the professional reasons. For him, getting into that suite was personal.

He and another Mavericks videographer did so in the third quarter, sneaking inside and interviewing all five on camera. When they finished, Marshall asked them for one more thing: a private message from them to Dirk that he would film, package, and eventually deliver to him. “Each of them gave Dirk a really personal message,” he said.

The Green Day video was followed by the court presentation, a laser show and pyrotechnics display that Seager had arranged after plans with the production company behind Drake and Migos’ last tour hadn’t worked out. Rick Carlisle spoke, and then Jason Terry and Shawn Marion, Dirk’s championship teammates, joined them on the floor. (Steve Nash, the most notable omission from the evening, couldn’t attend due to prior commitments.) Finally, Nowitzki had to talk.

It was a shock when he announced his retirement. Afterward, even team president Donnie Nelson claimed that he was in the dark. Most people around the team believe Nowitzki decided in a day or two leading up to Tuesday’s ceremony. His inner circle knew, certainly, and the decision itself had grown increasingly obvious as the season moved along. Still, most employees expected an offseason announcement. Maybe Nowitzki wasn’t even sure he would say it until that very moment.

Either way, it was perfect, right down to the very last moment. The plan, when Nowitzki signed off, had been to fading out to black as he walked off. But even with a dozen cameras jockeying for the perfect shot, it was the Mavericks’ in-arena wireless camera that ended up in the best spot, directly in front of Nowitzki as he headed through the tunnel.

“I said, ‘Hold on this shot, we’re following it all the way out,’” Kornblith recalled. “We’re going to get as far as you can. If you can get in the locker room, get in the locker room. People want to see this. So we took it as far as we could.”

USATSI_12506614-1024x683.jpg
(Photo: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports)

All this is how the Mavericks orchestrated one of the most elaborate retirement ceremonies for any athlete ever. It’s not why they did it, or why they cared to, or why it mattered.

“You have to make the platform possible first,” Marshall said. “Someone has to do it. Someone has to play 21 seasons. Someone has to be sixth all-time. Someone got to be the level of character that that man is. Someone has to teach this entire area the lessons that he did. So that I can go up there and knock the thing off the tee. He built it.”

Repeatedly, those involved talked about the love shown towards Nowitzki throughout this entire process. “I can’t tell you (how many times), as soon as someone heard it was for Dirk, they were like, ‘What do you need? Where’s the camera?’” Sirois said.

“For me,” Sirois said, “I just can’t tell you (how) this entire thing has been an exercise in understanding how much everybody loves Dirk.”

Sirois had followed Nowitzki since his first games in the league. Marshall and Elenez both joined the team before the season, but they also grew up as lifelong Mavericks fans. Kornblith had been preparing for this moment for years. Around the entire organization, you hear these same stories.

“Besides an immediate family member, Dirk means more to me than just about anybody,” Marshall said. “There’s no one else who has the resume and the love for the man. Jonathan’s the same way. We wanted it to be perfect, man.”

Marshall flew with the team to San Antonio for the season finale, landing back in Dallas the following evening. For the first time all season, his bag had ended up in the luggage truck, away from the boarding ramp and under the plane. All the emotions, the lifted responsibilities, the mental processes, had hit him from the past 48 hours. “I couldn’t even small talk people (on the plane),” he said. But when he went to retrieve his bag, there was Dirk.

“He’s 10 feet away walking right at me, just me and him,” Marshall said. “And I say, ‘Can I hug you?’ And he says ‘Yeah,’ and just laughs. And I give him a hug with both arms around him. I’m like, ‘Thank you. I love you.'”

And then he asks: “Did we get you? Did we surprise you with the legends?”

Nowitzki laughs again: “Dude, totally.”

“I’m so happy you’re a Shawn Kemp guy, because I’m a Shawn Kemp guy.”

“He’s incredible, isn’t he?”

“I got into the room and hung out with those dudes. I’m going to send it to you.”

“Please do.”

Marshall said it: For all the work they put in, for all the long hours and the months that culminated on April 9, they still needed Dirk to make all that possible, proving himself deserving of everything that was done for him. One thing Cuban said that evening, right after Dirk passed him the microphone, resonates.

“There’s no words that I could possibly say to describe how I feel, or what you meant to this organization,” Cuban said. “But I can make all kinds of promises, (and) I promise you that everything you taught us will continue on.”

And that, right there, is what this was all about.

(Top photo: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports)

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Post Oak

Post Oak 20254

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One thing I was thinking about yesterday as I was thinking about Dirk that I never realized and obviously took for granted was that guy never didn't play hard.  

Think of Kobe or Lebron playing childish games.  Pouting.  Being passive aggressive fucks.  Never Dirk.  That dude played hard all the time.  Unless I'm forgetting something in 21 years.

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