Hat-tip to Coolste, who has been keeping us updated with all things Dirk related right now after Germany qualified for the Olympics. Coolste also notes in the comments that there is a petition out there for Dirk carrying the National flag at the Olympics. Not sure how legit this is, but you never know.  If it could help Dirk, I am all for it.

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Mavs Summer league team lost yesterday to Golden State.  Check out the official recap here which has post game interviews with Low and Ellie.  Art Garcia sums it up better than the Jazz site does here:

Three Warriors scored in double figures as Golden State upended the Mavs 90-73 today at the Rocky Mountain Revue. Dallas was down just one point after the third quarter, but the Warriors outscored the boys in blue by 16 in fourth.

Gerald Green followed up yesterday's 27-point outing with a team-high 17 in 22 minutes. Reyshawn Terry added 14 and free-agent rookie Reggie Williams scored 11.

Star-telegram recap here as well.

On a side note also, Singleton returned to Dallas on Monday, which leaves Green and Foster the only two guys who the Mavs staff are probably looking at from here on out.  Remember that Foster does not have a contract with the Mavs yet.  They also brought in Courtney Sims on Monday, who spent some time with the Indiana last year.  From what I have seen thus far up here, he looks to be an ok big guy.  Definitely a work in progress though.

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Kurt Thomas resigns with the Spurs.

Josh Childress is off to play in Greece.  Supposedly signed a 3 year deal worth more than 20 Million after taxes.  And though he was a restricted free-agent, the Hawks can't match what European teams offer him. 

Could this be the start of a new trend with NBA players, or is this a fluke deal?

Ballineurope.com is now suggesting that the rival team of whom Josh went to, could now be looking at Deng.

Malice at the Palace... Take 2

SI.com says that Dampier has the 6th worst contract in the NBA.

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[Note by Toddy, 07/23/08 12:34 PM MDT ] Updated Free Agent List... Both restricted and unrestricted.  In case you're curious as too who is still out there, and who we could work a S&T for. 

Game starts pretty early today, hopefully most can watch it online at work on nba.com.  Tipoff will be at 1pm CST.

Artest and Smith links, Fisher questioning my thoughts on Cuban's sleeping patterns right now, Q&A with Kidd and more below.

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I figured we would get the obvious (or it should be anyway) one out of the way first.

Case for: He's Dirk.  He's the best player on the team.  And in a league where you usually can't win a title without a top ten player on your team, it might not be a good idea to get rid of one.

Case against:  Losing > Winning?

Coming into the playoffs Dirk told Jake his ankle wasn't getting much better .

Dirk mentioned his ankle hurting his lift, which has affected his rebounding. I had wondered about that, and I was impressed with Dirk's honesty on the point. I asked Dirk if it was improving at all. He said it really wasn't.

It seemed safe after reading that to think that his ankle was as good as it was going to get since he was going to continue playing on it.  But it actually has started getting better, and according to Art Garcia Dirk played without a brace in game three.

Obviously, that's good news.

Fantastic game by Dirk tonight.  For the series he now sits at 30.0ppg, 11.3rpg, 3.7apg, 1.7bpg, and he's shooting 52%.

Dirk had been good this series, but tonight was basically a "must-win" and he came up with his best game of the entire season.  I guess what I'm saying is, thank you Dirk.

Call me a masochist, but I finally worked up enough energy to browse the various stat sites to see if there was anything to be taken from the New Orleans game that hasn't already been discussed a thousand times (there isn't). While looking around, I started to look at some of the big picture league ranking type of articles that I generally skip during the regular season. An odd thing struck my eye: Dirk Nowitzki is everywhere. Quite simply, he is a dominant player in the league.

For example, I took a stop at 82games.com, which I hadn't visited in months. The first thing I noticed was "Clutch Stats" and the sister column "Super Clutch" stats. And there was Dirk, ranked third behind Kobe Bryant and Lebron James in clutch time point production. What about "Super Clutch" production? There's Dirk ranked fourth, with Manu Ginobli sneaking ahead of him.

Okay, here's another column on best performers against good teams. Nowitzki is ranked sixth in the league.   He's ninth against average teams and eighth against poor teams. Is our man Nowitzki bored unless he's challenged? Hrmm.

Let's head on over the knickerblogger.net. Dirk's efficiency puts him at fifth in the league.

And so on.

I guess this is quite obvious in hindsight, but Dirk is often criticized for things he is actually very good at (being "clutch") and he is routinely taken for granted on things that he does as well as anyone in the league (producing on offense). On a night when I was confronted with nothing but bad news in regards to the opening playoff game with the Hornets, it was the kind of jolt I needed.

As we briefly noted in the previous post, one of the important but lesser publicized aspects of the Jason Kidd trade has been how it has re-energized Dirk Nowitzki. This is a stark contrast to last year. In fact, one of the real danger signs heading into the playoffs last year was the decline in Dirk's game.

Here is a graph of Dirk's month-by-month stats from last season. If you account for his low minute count in April due to him being rested, you still see a pretty compelling and frightening picture--after the all-star break, Dirk's performance went down hill. Practically every major offensive category saw decline: FG%, 3FG%, rebounds per game, assists per game, and points per game.

Here are Dirk's stats for this season. The first thing you notice is that it's an almost mirror image of last season. Of course the April stats are skewed by Dirk's injury and lower minute count, but even some of those numbers are remarkable. Specifically, Dirk's shooting percentage and points per game--even with the lower minute count and his injury--are some of his best numbers this season.

The second thing you notice is that Dirk's game started to improve in January, right before the Kidd trade. I can't explain this other than to speculate that Dirk was informed Kidd was coming well before everyone else. Either way, you can't deny that the two graphs represent an amazing contrast.

If the end of last season was a disturbing preview of what would happen with Dirk in the playoffs, Dirk's performance heading out of the new year this season is a disturbing preview in the opposite sense--for the Mav's first round opponent.

[editor's note, by Jake] Not sure what happened with the scale numbers on the second graph, but the graph is correct. The numbers on the left are simply wrong, but the overall trends are accurate.

The practice this morning didn't go as well as everyone had hoped, and he's likely out for tonights game.

Tim MacMahon has the full transcript of Dirk's post-practice media session on the DMN blog.

Dirk says he doesn't anticipate being 100% by the end of the season and describes what he's able to do right now.

Dirk practiced for 45 minutes yesterday, and if he feels OK after another practice today he'll suit up against Golden State.

Avery says he has some concerns about bringing Dirk back against a quick team like Golden State, but here's a prediction ------ Dirk starts tonight.

Art Gracia is reporting that the MRI this morning showed Dirk sprained his knee and ankle.

Nothing is torn which was obviously everyones biggest fear, so I guess this is good news.

Dirk always recovers from these ankle sprains rather quickly, but the sprained knee and the fact that this is a high ankle sprain could make this one a little more complicated.

My uneducated guess is that Mark Cuban's initial two week diagnosis will be a pretty good one.

Two weeks would see Dirk miss seven of the remaining 12 games.

• vs LAC
• at DEN
• at GSW
• at LAC
• vs GSW
• at LAL
• at PHX