Dirk Nowitzki talked about how much it meant to him, after working so hard, so long to get it.
The victory, not the milestone.
Nowitzki moved past Shaquille O’Neal into sixth place on the NBA’s career scoring list, then made the go-ahead basket with 19.2 seconds left in overtime in the Dallas Mavericks’ 119-118 victory over the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday night.
Nowitzki will have plenty of time to think about what it means to pass O’Neal, a long-time rival who beat him in the 2006 NBA Finals.
But on Wednesday, the most important thing was getting a win a night after a loss on the road to the Toronto Raptors, and ahead of a long flight back to Dallas.
“That’s what I play for, is to compete at the highest level for this franchise, for this team,” Nowitzki said.
“Obviously No 6 in the bigger picture is a lot bigger than this win in Brooklyn in December, but when you’re out there you don’t think about that.
“You want to get this win bad and fight out there against a talented team.”
Nowitzki scored 22 points, giving him 28,609 in his career, and Wesley Matthews finished with 17.
“He definitely was at another level,” the Nets centre Brook Lopez said. “It was clicking for him. He was making all the right plays.”
Nowitzki came in needing 10 points to pass the 28,596 O’Neal scored in a career that could be capped with him being inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame next year.
Nowitzki is sure to get there someday, too, whenever he ends a career that saw him redefine the power forward position, and perhaps create the notion of a stretch-4 that teams now crave.
“You’re talking about a guy who’s a generational great player,” the Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said.
“He totally redefined the game, redefined a position.”
Nowitzki moved ahead of O’Neal with one of his high-arching jumpers from the corner with 9:51 left in the second quarter, when just about everything the Mavericks threw up went in.
The Mavericks started 20 for 25, and Barea made his first eight shots and did not miss until shooting an airball with the shot clock running out late in the period.
The Nets then made 12 of their first 14 shots of the third to surge into the lead and had a 92-81 advantage in the fourth that they could not hold in their fifth straight home loss.
Point guard Deron Williams was sidelined with a strained hamstring, sitting out what would have been his first game back in Brooklyn after the Nets bought out the final two seasons of his $98.5 million (Dh 362m) contract during the summer.
Presented with the five names of those ahead of him on the NBA career scoring list after passing a major personal milestone, Nowitzki responded as if it was music to his ears “That sounds pretty good,” the German told reporters. “That sounds really good. It’s a dream come true. When I was 20 years old, I never expected this.”
But he will need to keep his feet on the ground and on the court if he is to also keep the Mavericks in contention in the Western Conference.
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