Surfer Dirk
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Duration: The start of the 2009-10 season
Signature moment: This game winner against Charlotte.
Why this is his greatest look: I think it's important to go back to the moment Dirk revealed these breath-taking flowing locks. Skin Wade speaks the truth in this important video right here (despite his own questionable hair choices), that this hair needed to stay for Dirk.
Some deductive reasoning makes you think this hair is a direct product of his Australian sabbatical. For a few years, he'd show up looking like Owen Wilson in, well, pretty much any of his movies. Usually, the buzz cut would follow shortly, but in 2009, this headband/hair combo stretched into the first months of the season. Just consider how intimidating it is for a seven-foot man with several pounds of glowing golden locks to hit you with a face up jump shot and then drive right at your face the next possession. Frankly, I don't know how anyone ever defended him successfully during this hairstyle.
- Tim Cato
Mature Dirk
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Duration: Most of 2008 through now
Signature moment: Many. We'll go with his most recent, a game-tying 3-point against Portland.
Why this is his greatest look: Dirk, of course, has a lot of wacky hairstyles. There's a few early career hair modifications that didn't make this list. But ever since he turned 30, and especially now that he's a married man, this is the haircut he keeps coming back to -- shorter, easy to take care of, professional. Sometimes there's a little more scruff, sometimes the hair is a little longer up top, but it's consistently some variation of this style.
Do you realize how terrifying that is? This is a man who is not average in any manner: he's taller than you, he's made millions of dollars, he can accurate shoot a basketball off a single leg while fading away from his target with someone with a hand in his face trying to district him. He's a German giant, and yet he's out here with an average haircut, trying to front like he's just some dude. Throughout the chin patch and the bowl cut and all the other missteps, at least you knew he knew he was special, and his hair represented that. Now he's got the hair of a guy with a nine to five desk job, who, out of nowhere, just hit a trailing transition 3-pointer on your ass.
- Tim Cato