Thomas Pletzinger

The Great Nowitzki by Thomas Pletzinger is a 2022 W.W. Norton & Company publication.

After the Jordan era of basketball ended, I didn’t like the direction the league was headed and lost interest in the sport. After some time passed, my son started telling me about Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki, who played for our own Dallas Mavericks.

I declined his invitation to watch the games for a while, but he kept the pressure up until I finally succumbed, just to get him off my back.😁

Before I knew it, I got caught up on the excitement, and the game was fun again. We never missed a game on television, if we could help it. Watching Dirk was a thing of beauty. For someone seven feet tall, his agility, mobility and grace were unbelievable.

Every year, despite not having a bulked-up team full of superstars, Dirk got better and harder to beat.

While one never really knows what famous athletes are like in their private lives, sometimes we can get a vibe from them, just from the way they conduct an interview, their body language, remarks they make off the court, or what kind mischief they get up to that makes headlines.

But Dirk has always been so quiet, never made derogatory comments, never showed un-sportsman like conduct, or made waves of any kind… at least not on purpose or publicly.

He made his share of headlines now and then that was unfortunate, and embarrassing for him, but it was never a negative reflection on his character.

After reading this book, I feel even more confident that for the most part, the guy the fans perceived him to be, was pretty much the way he really is.

No one can go through those types of changes in life- fame, money and pressure- praise and criticism without becoming a little wary, a little jaded. Some people can’t handle it- but Dirk handled himself- at least publicly- representing his team and city as well as his home country of Germany, and his family and fans with great class.

This biography chronicles Dirk’s professional rise to one of the most elite players in the NBA and gives the reader a glimpse, albeit from a distance, of the man behind the professional veneer. The author followed Dirk’s career for a long time- traveled with him for seven years, with a tunnel-like vision centered on Dirk. He studied his subject closely, observing Dirk’s developments, both physically and mentally, as well as the toll on his body and mind over the years.

Dirk’s story is one of endurance, tenacity, will, and drive. He was fortunate enough to have some solid people in his orbit that helped keep him grounded, focused and balanced, making sure he understood his responsibilities and priorities.

The author sticks mainly to Dirk’s career, only deviating to give us a glimpse into his upbringing, but he did feel compelled to briefly examine some personal relationships. He speaks highly of Dirk’s wife, briefly profiling her artistic career, and included a fun interview with Steve Nash, who remains friends with Dirk.

I would have liked the author to expound on some of Dirk’s community and charity work, his foundations, etc., and I would have liked to know Dirk’s opinions about the league, what was going on when he played and how he views the future of the sport, but this is a biography and not a memoir- and the difference is that we don’t hear from Dirk in the first-person, instead we get the author’s perspective based on his interviews and observations- which is something I had to come to terms with.

Overall, though, the author did a good job with this book. The material is organized, insightful, and he did justice to Dirk and his legacy. I enjoyed tripping down memory lane, reliving the intensity of the playoffs, the emotional championship win, and the fun we had watching Dirk perform.

I miss those days. Today, as my family has grown up and started families of their own, we occasionally bring up those days. There’s a bittersweet, wistfulness to those memories, though. Not even one of us watches sports anymore- not on any level- professional, collegiate, or high school. We all have our reasons- how the teams are stacked, the attitudes, social media, sports blogs, constant talk and analysis, cheating, whining, and a plethora of other negatives that took all the fun out of it.

Now that I think about it…

Maybe Dirk was the last of dying breed… in fact, I know he was.

4 stars… (más)

German writer Thomas Pletzinger and his translator Ross Benjamin achieve remarkable success with this first novel told by an ethnologist acting as a journalist who seeks to interview a reclusive children’s author living on Lake Lugano in Italy. Three stories are told, the first in New York on September 11th, next at the lakeside vacation home, and earlier in NE Brazil where the three protagonists meet and find Lua, the dog of the title, plus bits in Finland and Germany. The book is about memory and time and the truth of overlapping events recorded by the players and by the ethnologist who strives and fails to “maintain distance” and record the story as he ponders his own life choices. The structure is challenging, densely written, short chapters going back and forth between narrators and time periods. It is difficult to distinguish the characters from each other at first, but within the first quarter of the book, it became easier to identify the who and the where and give oneself over to the story. The women seem the stronger characters while the men flail restlessly between drinking bouts and trying to find the truth about their feelings through their writing or avoiding it in activity. “Writing cannot produce truth.” [As the author pitches his adult novel overboard, I think of Hemingway’s missing manuscript left on the train by first wife, Hadley.] The detail is noticeable and meticulous in producing the quiet strength of this absorbing book.… (más)