Category: International Basketball Blog

Like many professional basketball players who currently aren’t playing professional basketball, Dallas Mavericks superstar Dirk Nowitzki is bored, and may eventually wind up playing overseas while the ongoing NBA lockout continues to destroy humanity.

Marc Stein of ESPN.com reports:

Although he continues to express optimism that the NBA season will be saved, Nowitzki has acknowledged that he has taken note of the blueprint established by Cleveland Cavaliers forward Omri Casspi, who announced earlier this week that he had signed a contract with Maccabi Tel Aviv in his native Israel that serves as a virtual letter of intent to join Maccabi in January if the lockout is still going, thus securing a spot for Casspi with a top European team early in a market starting to flood with established players.

Nowitzki has only just begun to field calls from interested clubs, but he said he’s aware of the Spanish media reports that have listed him as a target of perennial powerhouse Real Madrid and admitted that the idea of playing top-level basketball with a team in Spain — such as Real or their rivals Barcelona — intrigues him.

“It’s a great club with a great tradition,” Nowitzki said of Real Madrid. “I don’t know if that’s true, but (if the media reports are accurate) that’s something you’d have to look at hard.

“I still can’t believe that we’re not going to have a season (in the NBA). I can’t see us not playing. But if the lockout still stays strong, I’ve got a decision to make.”

The 33-year-old also revealed that he has reconsidered his previous stance about playing in his native Germany. For much of the summer, Nowitzki maintained that he preferred not to play in the German Bundesliga because he didn’t want to pick any one club over the rest. Yet he has since concluded that returning to the Bundesliga, for the first time since playing for his hometown DJK Wurzburg X-Rays during the 1998-99 lockout, might be the best way to promote the sport at home.

Naturally, the hope is that the lockout ends before the best team on the current NBA champions feels a need to take his talents overseas.

The Xinjiang Flying Tigers in China this week added J.J. Barea to their wish list and have extended a contract offer to the Dallas Mavericks free-agent guard, according to sources close to the situation.

ESPN.com reported Monday that Xinjiang was also chasing Atlanta Hawks free agent Jamal Crawford to fill the void created by a long-term wrist injury suffered by former Sacramento Kings first-round pick Quincy Douby.

Crawford has since said in multiple interviews that he’s considering the offer, but Xinjiang wants to move fast after losing Douby — one of the best players in the Chinese Basketball Association last season — just days away from the Nov. 19 season opener.

Barea, though, has expressed interest in playing in Spain and, according to sources close to Puerto Rico national team star, continues to explore his options there as well.

— Reported by Marc Stein of ESPN.com

Dallas Mavericks’ German power forward Dirk Nowitzki, MVP in the Mavericks’ NBA finals triumph in June, is not ruling out the possibility of a move to Europe if the current NBA lock-out continues.

“This week we are going back to work, Dirk has not touched the ball since the European Championship at the end of September,” declared Nowitzki’s personal coach Holger Geschwindner, who also said the player was “ruling nothing out, even if he has no concrete ideas” about a switch to Europe.

“At the moment, Dirk is out of shape. We are going to work hard over the nex two weeks,” added Geschwindner.

“If he goes anywhere, he will be going there for the whole season.”

— Reported by AFP