The Great Nowitzki, Thomas Pletzinger
The Great Nowitzki, Thomas Pletzinger
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The Great Nowitzki
Basketball and the Meaning of Life

Author: Thomas Pletzinger, Shane Anderson

Narrator: Charles Constant

Unabridged: 13 hr 3 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/15/2022


Synopsis

A journey into the mindset of a historic basketball superstar, and the importance of his landmark career.

The seven-foot Dirk Nowitzki is one of the great players in basketball history. With a devastating fadeaway and unexpected agility, the Dallas Mavericks superstar helped to pioneer the modern three-shooting game and became a global ambassador for the sport. Award-winning novelist and sportswriter Thomas Pletzinger traveled with Nowitzki for more than seven years, seeking the secret of his success and longevity. In novelistic detail, Pletzinger tells the dramatic story of how a lanky kid from the German suburbs became a top-five all-time scorer and NBA champion. He profiles the revolutionary training methods developed by Holger Geschwindner, Dirk's enigmatic mentor and coach, whose philosophical insights on performance, creativity, and freedom shaped Dirk's game.

A masterpiece of sports journalism and a work of personal obsession—akin to John McPhee's A Sense of Where You Are and David Halberstam's The Breaks of the Game—The Great Nowitzki brims with a fan's passion and offers an intimate portrait of an iconic performer.

About Thomas Pletzinger

Thomas Pletzinger is an award-winning German novelist, sportswriter, and basketball fanatic. He has won fellowships and had teaching positions at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Grinnell College. He lives in Berlin.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Daniel Ray on January 11, 2025

All time basketball great, Dirk Nowitzki, willed his 2011 Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Championship. After being down in the first round, he showed up for game 3 with a competitive game face that no one had ever seen before. In one game, he drove to the basket over and over getting fouled and sank 24......more

Goodreads review by Ginni on May 06, 2022

I don't care much about sports, and this is a very sports-heavy book. There's no getting around the "basketball" part of the subtitle "Basketball and the Meaning of Life." Chapter-long game play by plays that only sort of make sense to me, who's never watched a basketball game. Lengthy descriptions......more