Photo Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

The Hilarious Story Of Dirk Nowitzki Yelling At Mark Cuban During A Game

Dirk Nowitzki is one of the realest and dudes in this league!

This coming season will be Dirk’s 21st. He spent every single NBA career minute played with the Dallas Mavericks. He transformed a lottery team into one of the best teams of this milleniumn, took the franchise to the Finals (2006) for the first time in history, and eventually brought home the Mavs’ first title in 2011. Nowitzki made it clear from the start, that he didn’t have any intention of playing for another team – ever.

Over these last 20 years, Dirk Nowitzki and Mavericks’ owner Mark Cuban have become good friends. Whenever Dirk was a free agent, he was wating for free agency to be almost over, in order to set his salary accordingly. He sacrificed a lot of money, simply because he wanted to play with a competitive roster. 2006’s most valuable player was basically paying other players’ salaries (Parsons, Chandler etc…) out of his own pocket.

The bond and trust Cuban and Dirk share is something we might never see again in the NBA. But being such a devoted player, gives Dirk the permission to say and do stuff nobody else would be allowed to.

Zach Lowe now spoke with author (“The Soul of Basketball” ) Ian Thomsen on his podcast “The Lowe Post” about one amzing story between the billionaire and the German from the 2010-11 season. Per ESPN:

There’s a lot about Cuban in the book and how the players learn to tune out when he’s yelling at them during the games. And another moment from that season … they screw up a possession … Dirk inbounds the ball and Cuban’s yelling at Dirk because because he had just made a mistake or something happened.

And apparently everyone on the team remembers this: Dirk passed the ball back into play with one hand and as he pulled out his mouth guard with the other hand he shouted, “Shut the fuck up!” at Cuban.