Dirk Nowitzki to head overseas as the NBA lockout drags on – Dallas Mavericks News
NBA’s most coveted import is heading back to the other side of the Atlantic as the lockout drags on.
Dirk Nowitzki, the 7-foot German wonder, has said that with the NBA labour dispute threatening to wipe out the season, he will head back to Germany soon.
The Dallas Mavericks super star was disheartened after talks broke off between the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) and the NBA last Thursday, which most probably mean that at least a very significant part of the
NBA season will now be lost.
"If there is no settlement, I'll go back home any time soon and probably start training with my coach again and really get back in the routine," he said.
Nowitzki is the reigning NBA Finals MVP and one of the most globally recognized super star in the NBA. After leading the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA World Championship win over strong favourites Miami Heat, Nowitzki returned to
Germany to take some time off.
After just a few weeks though, he was again on a basketball court, this time representing the German National Basketball team in the FIBA EuroBasket tournament. He has since come back to the United States hoping that the NBA lockout
would be over soon, but that doesn’t appear likely now.
The super star power forward is one of the few players to have serious offers from the biggest European teams, and he says now he will have to go back and consider taking one up.
"And then you've got to keep your options open, maybe see what's going on overseas.”
He is willing to wait a little longer, but only a little.
"If the lockout still stays strong then I've definitely got to look into something there in January, February."
Nowitzki said he had hoped that the involvement of director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service would help resolve things, but those hopes have now been dashed. George Cohen engaged both sides for three days, and
although he made significant progress on many low key issues, the Basketball Related Income (BRI) split and salary cap structure proved to be the undoing of his efforts.
"We were all hoping that with the mediator something was going to happen," he said. "Just talks broke off, so it's very unfortunate.”
Nowitzki said one should always hang on to hope that things would get better, but admitted it doesn’t look likely at the moment.
“We'll see. Hopefully we can get something going here any time soon, but it doesn't look good."
The NBA and NBPA have broken off talks and NBA Commissioner David Stern is likely to announce more game cancellations soon.
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