'A Legend, An Icon': Lakers' Star LeBron James Praises Dirk Nowitzki After Mavs Unveil Statue
Despite scoring a game-high 38 points, it wasn't a storybook Christmas Day ending for LeBron James on Sunday, as Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks beat the Los Angeles Lakers 124-115 at American Airlines Center.
As much as the loss might have hurt, especially considering it was on the road away from his family on Christmas, James still made sure to acknowledge the Mavs unveiling Dirk Nowitzki's statue before the game.
“First of all, before the [unveiling] of what the statue will look like, I already knew what the statue was going to look like," said James. "It had to be a fadeaway on one leg. It had to be. No question about it."
In typical LeBron fashion, though, he didn't stop after talking about the statue. He went on to gush about how great of a player Nowtzki was and the impact he had on the game of basketball.
"Dirk is a legend. He is an icon. I think he is the greatest international player ever," said James. "He’s right there with Manu [Ginobili]. What he brought here, what he brought to the city, that boy was cold, man. Dirk was cold. He revolutionized what a stretch-four big looked like. Put the ball on the ground, finish above the rim, in his earlier years. He just mastered that in between game as his career got a couple years down the line.
"Then, he started taking it out to the three point line. You couldn’t put a small on him because he was too big. You couldn’t really put a slow big on him because he was too quick with his first step early on. You could never block his shot because he shot it behind his head, kind of like Larry Bird. Dirk, you can talk about top power forwards and top players of all time at that position. He was right up there with [Charles] Barkley, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Kevin McHale, and those guys.
"They tough. Dirk was tough. When you can talk about somebody with one name, you know he was tough. Dirk was tough, for sure.”
This isn't the first time James has expressed his admiration for Nowitzki, and it likely won't be his last. Despite suffering what many peg as the worst NBA Finals loss of his career at the hands of Nowitzki's Mavs in 2011, James has always had the utmost respect for the Big German ... at least from that point on.
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