Flying High

Posted by Rob Mahoney on July 21, 2011 under Commentary |

Photo by Billy Surface of D Magazine.

Post-championship life has bee kind to the Mavs, but even the talk show appearances and fancy paperweights can’t stack up against the incandescent hometown love. The city of Dallas has been impressive in their admonition of the reigning champs, and though one should expect no less from a sports city hosting a team that’s on top of the world, it’s still refreshing to see the entire metroplex put their favorite Mavericks on pedestals.

Zac Crain did just that in D Magazine’s “Best of Big D,” feature, in which two Mavs took home some imaginary hardware. Terry gets his due in an ode to that infamous tattoo, but the jewel is Crain’s homage to Nowitzki, Dallas’ top athlete:

The goofy German kid they’d left behind, the one with a regular-season repertoire and nothing more, had turned into a cold-eyed closer with an unstoppable shot. That shot—a one-legged fade-away jumper, often off the wrong foot, sometimes while turning around, occasionally from an angle that could end a friendly game of HORSE in fisticuffs—has probably ruined youth basketball for the next decade. In North Texas and beyond, kids everywhere are literally falling all over themselves, trying to emulate Nowitzki. The move is oddly fundamentally sound while remaining wildly unorthodox, like if a cat burglar kept regular office hours.

As he and the Mavs knocked out the Portland Trail Blazers, then the Lakers, then the Thunder, and finally the Heat, that awkwardly beautiful jumper took its rightful place as one of the most iconic shots in the game, now compared to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hook and Hakeem Olajuwon’s Dream Shake. Nowitzki’s overall standing, too, ascended the ladder, his reputation finally free of every “but” and “if only.” We shouldn’t have needed the approval of a marginal ex-player like Jon Barry to convince us of Nowitzki’s greatness.

Check out Crain’s takes on Nowitzki and Terry in their entirety, as well as his awards for various other cultural figures and spots (including a nod to a Friday Night Lights alum) over at D.