The Dallas Mavericks legend received a fine contract in this year's free agency. 38 year old Dirk Nowitzki earned himself a two year, $50 million deal with a player option after one year. Many Mavs fans rejoiced in seeing the German hero finally earn some money back after all his sacrifices for the team, but little do they know how much the Mavs wanted to let Dirk know how much they loved him.
“I basically told him, look, you tell me the price and it actually started lower,” Mark Cuban told CBS Sports Radio. “His agent said ‘how about this much’ and we said ‘we’ll have a little more money, we’ll give you more’ and as the numbers started getting bigger and bigger, it was like ‘what about this number?’ ‘We’ll give you more.’ Finally, it was like ‘this is what we got left, take it!’”
It was no wonder Dirk's contract seemingly took long to work out during free agency. The most paranoid fans anticipated Nowitzki joining the Warriors after all the hype to attract old talent, but loyalty obviously means something to #41.
“We wanted to make it a two-year deal with a team option so that people wouldn’t speculate that he was going to retire because Dirk is the type of guy, he’s just a good guy,” continued Cuban. “He would hate going city to city to city and everyone asking him if he was going to retire because he has no intention of retiring after this year and, with the team option that we have, he gave us the flexibility that said ‘if we find somebody that we can send the money to that he likes, we all like, then let’s do it and if not, let’s give the money to Dirk again which I’m fine with too.”
Hopeful we see Nowitzki play out his final years in Dallas. It seems like that is his plan. What a true basketball icon.
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