NBA fans would undoubtedly love to see a 1v1 battle between a prime Dirk Nowitzki & Luka Doncic in action. Shaquille O’Neal even brought up a question regarding the hypothetical clash against Doncic during Nowitzki’s appearance on his podcast. However, while ‘answering’ the question, it appears that the German decided to go on a separate track completely.
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As one of his “silly questions”, Shaquille O’Neal asked the Mavericks legend who the victor would be, especially with 100 million German (Deutsche) Marks on the line.
“Dirk in his prime and Luka, 1-on-1 for a 100 million German Mark… Deutsche Marks, forgive me,” Shaq asked.
Seemingly unwilling to give a straight answer, Nowitzki took shots at both players’ defensive shortcomings. However, he did praise Doncic and himself for being incredible offensive talents, before pondering graphically over how the competition would go down.
“Is it make it, take it? Cause neither one of us could get a stop… I got the ball first? I mean I know for a fact that I would have a hard time guarding him… he can drive me both ways, he’s got the step-backs. But I do know in my prime he would have had problem guarding me as well. So that’s a matchup with a lot of buckets and not a lot of stops,”
In the end, Dirk refused to name a victor on this occasion. However, the Mavericks icon has admitted that the Slovenian superstar is already better than him on numerous other occasions.
Dirk Nowitzki shared the locker room with Luka Doncic during the 2018-2019 season. In his last season, the sharpshooting big man was fortunate enough to witness Luka blossom in front of his very eyes.
Of course, Doncic was far from being the phenom that he is today. However, his maturity and rapid development put Nowitzki at ease very quickly.
“I could see it in his first year, yeah for sure. He obviously wasn’t the player that he is now. But you can see how he reads the game, his basketball IQ, his passing was out of this world. So I could see that he will be uh the next guy for us, the next franchise player,” Dirk said.
During his first year in the league, Doncic put everyone on notice by averaging 21.2 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 6 assists per game. Having only built on it since, the 6ft 7″ guard is not just the face of the Dallas Mavericks today, but also already one of the faces of the NBA.
The 25-year-old is now in the NBA Finals, facing Jayson Tatum and the dominant Boston Celtics. The Slovenian has done excellently to lead his team so far in the postseason. However, can he get over the hump to win the Dallas Mavericks their first title since Dirk Nowitzki led them to the promised land in 2011?
Yes, only time will tell. But, it has always been a fool’s errand to bet against Luka Doncic.
