Photo Credit: AP Photo/Ron Jenkins

Dirk Nowitzki On Players Forcing Trades: “It’s Not The Way To Go”

We all know that Dirk Nowitzki managed to set all of his basketball records and new parameters for big men, playing for one sole team. Something that is less and less likely in today’s NBA.

Loyalty is a dying art in the world of sports. Players like Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Dirk Nowitzki were the last breed of NBA stars to never “jump ship” and leave when their team is not performing up to par. The ability to remain apart of a losing team is something only the best can do; not particularly skill wise, but mentally. Players often move around the league for two reasons; to contend for a championship or for the green paper that the world revolves around.

But loyalty goes both ways, and in today’s NBA even trying to be loyal to a team seems impossible. We’ve seen it when Isaiah Thomas, Blake Griffin and DeMar DeRozan, among others, got traded.

Even though it’s not a one way street, the inflationary amount of players under contract actively demanding or even provoking trades has made it almost impossible for teams to plan for their futures.

Players actively forcing trades is also something Dirk Nowitzki has a hard time relating to.

“It’s definitely new,” Nowitzki said on SI’s Crossover podcast. “We always felt like we the players didn’t have enough power at the beginning of my career (in 1998), and the owners had all the power, could make all the moves. And now it’s almost shifting like a little bit too much. I think there should be like a happy medium. But now the players forcing themselves out, to me is not the way to go, either…

…“I was old school,” Nowitzki said on the podcast. “I don’t want to sit here and judge these guys that that are doing that. I think everybody has to know what’s best for themselves, for their career, for their brand—you know, everybody has a brand now— and what’s best for their family. For me, it was staying in Dallas. It worked out great there. And I’ve had my family there and I loved it and I grew into that community. So that’s something that just worked for me. But of course, I get it. It’s not for everybody.”