It was a play that Dirk Nowitzki has run countless times: Run out in transition -- or, in Nowitzki's case, jog -- set a screen at the foul line extended, pop to the corner and hit a nifty little 20-footer.
And with that, Nowitzki became the sixth-leading scorer in the history of the NBA on Wednesday night.
Only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain have scored more points than Nowitzki since the NBA came into existence 66 years ago. What do they all have in common? They're all first-name-basis giants of the sport, with the exception of Malone, who simply went by his nickname, the Mailman.
The truth is that nobody has delivered as consistently and uniquely as Nowitzki has for the past 18 years in American professional basketball.
Which is incredible to consider, since when he came onto the scene in 1998 as an awkward, gangly 7-footer from Germany, Nowitzki was an enigma.
A deer-in-the-headlights enigma, as it happened.
"When I was 20, I was scared to death out there, and had a brutal first year," Nowitzki said recently.
As a rookie, at a time when NBA basketball was defined by one-on-one guard play and endless pounding in the low post, Nowitzki was an experiment. What place was there in this game for a seven-foot German whose only redeeming quality was to do the opposite of what seven-footers were supposed to do?
Sure, fellow German Detlef Schrempf had blazed a certain trail at 6-9, and Toni Kukoc had come over from Croatia and made his mark as a smooth, 6-10 playmaker. But no one stateside had seen the likes of Nowitzki before.
The fact that we will again -- and already are seeing glimpses of Dirk-isms in Latvian protege Kristaps Porzingis -- is a testament to Nowitzki's uniqueness and greatness.
"When he came in the league, there was no guy that was the quintessential stretch power forward," Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said. "He has redefined that position, and in doing so, he’s been a game-changer in a big way because there is now a generation of players in the last 10 years coming through taking his example."
With 22 points from Nowitzki, the Mavs survived with a 119-118 overtime victory over the Nets on Wednesday night. And it was appropriate in so many ways that Nowitzki surpassed the quintessential traditional 7-footer, Shaquille O'Neal, who scored some 1,200 more baskets than Nowitzki -- most of those above or right at the rim.
"The game evolved from when I first got in the league, when there was a lot of one-on-one, a lot of pounding," Nowitzki said. "Some power forwards would dribble the ball five or six times, turn around, pump fake and get fouled or something. When they started building in the zone, that’s when the game started to change."
It changed forever because of a seven-foot German who, as a star-struck, 20-year-old rookie, managed to shoot only 41 percent from the field (on barely seven attempts per game) and 21 percent from 3-point range.
Through that short-range prism, drafting Nowitzki ninth overall and inserting him into a game so ill-suited to his talents looked like a huge mistake.
More than 28,000 points later, with Nowitzki's game and style still flourishing in Dallas and beyond, there's no doubt it was worth the gamble.
