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Dallas Mavericks forward Dirk Nowtizki is a member of the 2012 Western conference All-Star team. The NBA champion spoke with reporters in Orlando at NBA All-Star weekend about this season’s crowded schedule:
Question: With all the injuries in the NBA this year, how much do you attribute to the fact that there’s so many games coming so fast?
Dirk Nowitzki: Yeah, we knew that coming in that the schedule was a monster. It was everyone’s fault. It was the players’ fault, it was the NBA’s fault. We knew this was coming for two years and we didn’t do anything about it, so now we have to deal with this shortened season and just play a lot of games. We’ve got nine games in 12 games coming out of the break, which is a ridiculous number of games. But we’ve just got to deal with it and go from there. We’ve just got to fight through it. We knew coming in it was going to be bad, but you’ve just got to deal with it.
Question: Will we see more teams do what the Spurs did the other day and sit Parker and Duncan?
Nowitzki: We have obviously an older team, and we have a tough stretch coming up. We have games back to back to back, so I doubt J Kidd or some of those guys are going to play all nine games in 12 days. I don’t know if it’s going to happen. But we’ve got to fight through it, hopefully get some of our bodies back. I don’t know how Roddy is doing, hopefully get him back soon. I don’t know how long D-West is going to be out, but we’re going to need every healthy body and get through this tough stretch.
