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BERLIN — Germans love the Dirk Nowitzki story: the young local man who
travels halfway around the world to play among giants, in a city known mainly
as a nighttime TV soap opera, to conquer in a game few Germans care about.
Although he's the NBA's returning most valuable player, the Dallas Mavericks'
7-foot forward remains a story Germans don't really understand.
"To understand Nowitzki's profile here, you have to understand that he is
probably the single most popular athlete still active in Germany, but that
very few people see him play," said Marcus Nick, the editor of Basket
Magazine, Germany's most popular basketball publication. "Nowitzki is
basketball in Germany, but the three most popular sports are soccer, soccer
and soccer."
Still, the Nowitzki story has great appeal.
"He makes his way in America, becomes a star at their own game, then returns
here and is unchanged, a typical German who lives in the bedroom he grew up
in and loves his mother," said Christoph Bertling, a sports researcher at the
German Sport University in Cologne.
He's not the only German sports star these days, though most of the biggest
names have retired, including former Formula One champion Michael Schumacher,
former tennis stars Steffi Graf and Boris Becker and the great German soccer
player Franz Beckenbauer.
But he's the most likable.
Friends, coaches and media watchers note that while he earns $14 million a
year, he doesn't travel with an entourage, insist on special foods or
complain about being paired with a roommate while playing with the German
National Team, which he does every summer after the long NBA season.
He's known for being soft-spoken, for helping children and for understanding
the obligation to society that Germans think athletes owe. In German, he's
"bodenstaendig," or down-to-earth. And, especially coming from the often
flamboyant NBA, it's the key to his popularity.
"He could earn much more money as a spokesman, but his appeal here is that he
doesn't," Bertling said.
Nowitzki isn't a constant presence in German society — athletes aren't. Film
actors are preferred as spokespeople. In a recent poll, no more than 8
percent of Germans associated any active player with the product he or she
advertised, though Nowitzki was at the top of the list.
The Mavericks and the NBA are barely an afterthought on the German sports
scene, featured on the satellite Premiere system, which has an estimated 4.5
million subscribers (for movies, sports, news and children's programming), in
this nation of 82 million.
A Premiere spokesman said the company doesn't disclose viewer numbers but
said that it's happy with NBA viewership. NBA games often are broadcast in
the early hours of the morning (7:30 p.m. in Dallas is 1:30 a.m. in Berlin).
When those games are on, they feature Dallas more often than not.
Dirk Bauermann, the coach of the German national team and nine-time coaching
champion of the German Basketball League, said that millions tune in whenever
Nowitzki is playing for Germany. In contrast, the German league isn't
televised here.
There have been German NBA players before: Uwe Blab and Detlef Schrempf,
though neither had near Nowitzki's popularity, and neither won the NBA's Most
Valuable Player Award.
"At this point in his career, after long, draining seasons, maybe the best
thing for him would be to rest over the summers," Bauermann said. "But he
knows how important he is to the sport in Germany, so he's always here,
always ready to help, to play, to give us as much time as he has."
Nowitzki is a constant nominee for German Sportsman of the Year, an award
he's expected to win this December, which would make him the first basketball
player to win the honor.
"You cannot overstate his importance in Germany," said German Basketball
Federation spokesman Christoph Bueker. "He's a star here despite the sport he
plays."
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