Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki will never forget 2006 and 2007, and for painful reasons of course.

As every Mavs fan would know, 2006 was the year when Nowitzki had a real chance to win his and Dallas' first-ever NBA championship. After finishing fourth in the West with a 60-22 record, they went to work and took down the fifth-ranked Memphis Grizzlies, top-rated San Antonio Spurs and second-seeded Phoenix Suns in order to book a ticket to the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat. Unfortunately, they weren't able to get the job done and lost in the championship series in six games.

Making matters worse, while everybody thought they were going to bounce back the following year, the opposite happened. While they topped the West with a 67-15 record, little did they imagine they would suffer a first-round exit in the postseason at the hands of the “We Believe” Golden State Warriors.

Dirk, for his part, admitted that the losses were so painful and heartbreaking that he didn't even want to get out of his house in Dallas.

“It would have been unbelievable to win in '06. And then losing in the first round in '07 to the Warriors, those were some tough, tough losses. Gut-wrenching, to the point where I was embarrassed and disappointed and didn’t want to leave the house for a couple weeks,” Nowitzki shared, per Steve Aschburner of NBA.com.

It's hard to blame Dirk Nowitzki for still thinking of those two fateful years. Had everything gone their way, they would have probably been three-time champions by now.

Still, Nowitzki deserves credit for never giving up and running away from the grind. He and the Mavs were eventually rewarded with a title in 2011, forever cementing Dirk's legacy as one of the best to ever do it.