Read some awesome stuff from 2005 when Dirk was breaking the 10k points barrier

Back in 2008, when I decided the Mavericks were cool and basketball was neat, I joined the message boards at dallas-mavs.com. It's a good place, and it taught me a lot about basketball. I still try to visit occasionally, and today, I stumbled across an absolute gem.

One of the best features of a message board is that any thread, no matter when it was created, can be revived to the top of the conversation. Today, likely in honor of Dirk passing 27,000 points in his career, someone did that with a thread about Dirk Nowitzki approaching a scoring milestone. He was about to pass 10,000 points. It was 2005.

Here's some specific excerpts of different posts from this thread, which, again, were all made in January of 2005.

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Did anyone notice that Dirk has scored 9972 career points now and is in reach for his 10000th point tonight. How many Mavs players besides Finley and Stackhouse have reached that mark?

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But Dirk might be the first to reach 20,000... hopefully

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It won't be easy keeping this up, but if he scores at this clip for a few more years..... maybe 5 years? Considering his rookie season wasn't great on scoring, I could see him reaching 20,000 someday.

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Better accomplishment will be 10,000 + rebounds averaging 9+ per game.

Right now in many people's eyes he's not much better than Tom Chambers. Of course Chambers couldn't rebound against a bunch of junior high kids... but that's different. The label will stick for a while considering Chambers' career accomplishments: 20,000+ points... a few all-nba teams.

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It won't be easy keeping this up? I would be shocked if Dirk doesn't shatter the 20,000 point mark. He's reached 10,000 in less than 6.5 years. One of those years was the strike shortened season where Dirk was clueless about what to do in the NBA. I think Dirk will end up closer to 35,000 than 20,000.

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Here's an interesting thought: Who (for there career) will have the most points?

Lebron
Dirk
Kobe
McGrady

Kobe and McGrady are 3,000 and 1,000 more points more than Dirk right now. But they are all roughly the same age. Lebron is interesting in that he may not score as much on average as them but he has had a better start than all 3 of them.

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Those were my favorite posts out of about 30 from 2005, but by all means go read the entire thread. It's really fantastic to see people speculate about a young player who we now know as a cultural and basketball icon, an NBA champion, and a hero to so many people around the world. Knowing that Dirk accomplished all that we hoped, once upon a time long ago, is a truly special feeling.