It’s Been a Career Year for Nowitzki

DALLAS — Dirk Nowitzki’s basketball “toolbox” is almost full.

Once a lanky teenager with little more than a natural jump shot, Nowitzki’s raw potential made him a lottery pick at age 20. Even when he became an All-Star at 23, the 7-footer still had plenty of room for improvement.

Defense, especially. Rebounding too. And for a big guy, he sure had a lousy post-up game.

Now, a month shy of 28, Nowitzki has put it all together.

He’s coming off his best regular season, topping his performance of the previous year, when he was third in the most-valuable-player voting. This one was better because he led the Dallas Mavericks to 60 wins -- matching the franchise record he helped set three years before.

While Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and others have been dazzling in the playoffs, Nowitzki’s been brutally efficient.

He helped Dallas build insurmountable halftime leads in the first two games against the Memphis Grizzlies. Then, with Game 3 seemingly lost, he grabbed a loose ball, smartly maneuvered behind the three-point line and swished a shot that forced overtime and essentially wrapped up the series.

Since finishing the sweep Monday, the Mavericks have been waiting to see whether they’ll play San Antonio or Sacramento in the second round. Nowitzki has spent the week fretting about losing his rhythm, a statement typical of his desire and almost comical to those who know better.

After all, he’s no longer a wunderkind. He’s an established, dominant player going into the prime of his career and -- this is the part the Mavericks really love -- he’s still striving to improve.

“We’ve been asking ourselves the last nine years, ‘When are we going to hit the ceiling on this guy?’ ” said Donnie Nelson, Dallas’ president of basketball operations and the man most responsible for bringing Nowitzki to the NBA.

“The thing that continues to baffle our minds is how he grows as a player in every situation. He just continues to improve. ... He has an incredible work ethic combined with a very unique talent.”

Nowitzki was deficient in many areas early in his career because he didn’t grow up around the game the way most NBA players do.

Growing up in Germany, there were no all-star basketball camps. Not even a high school team. All he had was a coach-mentor-guru, Holger Geschwindner, who’d played in the Olympics and who knew the quickest way to the NBA was the novelty of someone really big who could shoot from really far.

Even after he established himself in the pros, Nowitzki went home every summer to work on rounding out his game. Geschwindner visits several times per season, and was in town at the start of the playoffs. Meanwhile, Nowitzki has been a regular at the team’s practice court, refining the shot that’s produced at least 20 points in 31 straight games and an average of 31.3 in the playoffs.