When Dirk Nowitzki first started playing basketball in Germany, he was a member of DJK Würzburg, a team in Germany’s second-tier division, behind the Bundesliga. It was there that his longtime trainer, Holger Geschwindner, noticed him for the first time.
“The first thing [I noticed] is you had no technical skills,” Geschwindner joked after being asked by Nowitzki during a video segment with Amazon Prime, prompting a laugh from the Mavericks legend as the two jested back and forth.
Nowitzki went on to be one of the greatest players in NBA history, winning league MVP in 2007, an NBA championship in 2011, and scoring over 31,000 points in his career, good for sixth on the all-time leaderboard. He retired after 21 seasons with the Dallas Mavericks in 2019 and took a job with Amazon Prime’s new NBA coverage team last year.
That job led him to this game, a Thursday matchup between the Memphis Grizzlies and Orlando Magic, taking place in Berlin, Germany. It’s the first regular-season game in NBA history to be played in Germany following numerous preseason and exhibition games in previous years.
Amazon Prime is covering the game and sent Nowitzki to Germany to cover the game and take a stroll down memory lane with his longtime friend and trainer. Nowitzki and Geschwindner shared memories of their first training sessions as they walked past courts in Germany. Nowitzki remembered having trouble shooting when he first started training with Geschwindner.
“The key is first of all, the ball has to be your friend,” his trainer said. “Shooting only on the fingertips, the most sensitive, and put some pressure at the end.”
Nowitzki told stories of the two sleeping on mattresses on the gym floor. Geschwindner said players often dream of NBA careers and 5-star hotels without doing the work first, so he wanted Nowitzki to start at the bottom and work his way to that level of success.
They discussed the 1998 Nike Hoop Summit where most NBA and college scouts saw Nowitzki for the first time in person.
“The hoop summit completely changed our lives,” Nowitzki said.
The 7-footer played well in the exhibition game and was selected 9th overall in the NBA Draft later that year, but struggled in his first season — a 50-game, shortened season due to a lockout earlier that summer. Nowitzki and his trainer remember all the harsh words that were shared about him during that season, including predictions he’d be back in Germany within a year’s time.
“All the things those top coaches told us, it was garbage,” Geschwindner said in the segment.
He often had Nowitzki doing abnormal drills that focused on balance and footwork. He wanted Nowitzki to be able to do all things on the court.
“Those days, all the big guys had been pretty clumsy,” he said. “The big guys usually had to be responsible for the rebound, but a good basketball team has to have five guys on the floor that can shoot. That’s the reason why we started the Institute for Applied Nonsense.”
Applied nonsense, Geschwinder explained, is the explanation for why they did these drills that most others saw as garbage or useless. They helped make Nowitzki the legend he was. His trainer was always there, every step of the way from the time Nowitzki was 14 on the streets of Germany to his final game in the NBA after 21 grueling seasons.
“Every time I needed you, one phone call and you were here helping me out,” Nowitzki said.
