Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki has been known to roast teammates and even himself all over his social media accounts. Recently, he had another victim to his list: former coach Don Nelson.
He looks like a bad guy from the movie Taken!!! https://t.co/SLZVTzDHcR
— Dirk Nowitzki (@swish41) September 7, 2018
Nelson is in attendance during the on-going Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, obviously in support of former Maverick Steve Nash. Sporting a new, slick hair-do and a perfectly-grown beard commonly seen in Hollywood movies, Nelson indeed projects a true action star in this picture.
In the basketball scene, he was the Mavs' head coach from 1997 to 2005, obviously the reason why he and Nowitzki developed a good-standing relationship. Nelson was first recruited as a general manager by then team minority owner Frank Zaccanelli in 1996. Deantae Prince of Sports Illustrated mentioned how the blunt and no-nonsense coach answered the Mavericks' call to hire him as their top overseer.
The hits kept coming for Zaccanelli, who reached Hawaii only to receive a blunt assessment of his team from Nelson. “Your team really stinks,” Nelson said. To which Zaccanelli replied, “I hope I didn’t fly all this way for you to tell me something I already know.”
The year after that, Nelson would make a franchise-changing move as a general manager: draft German big man Dirk Nowitzki. Prince also reiterated that it was Nelson's son, Donnie, who first scouted Nowitzki in Europe. They brought him into the US to watch him play in an exhibition game.
The elder Nelson didn’t have time to watch Nowitzki until the future Hall of Famer traveled stateside for a week of training in Dallas and an exhibition game in San Antonio. Nelson watched Nowitzki practice every day. “This kid has a chance to revolutionize the game of basketball,” he told Zaccanelli.
That would mark the start of the partnership of Nowitzki and Nelson as they established a long-standing winning culture in Dallas.
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