Dirk Nowitzki’s reign as Europe’s NBA all-time great may be short lived

Basketball has distinctly North American origins: it was invented by Canadian Dr James Naismith while he was teaching at a Massachusetts YMCA. However, since the first basketball game was played back in 1892, the sport has grown into an international concern. Last week, the NBA celebrated its 75th anniversary by naming its All-Time European Teams, voted on by fans and European basketball experts.

The first team was filled with familiar names. Along with two current superstars in Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, of the Milwaukee Bucks, and Slovenia’s Luka Dončić, of the Dallas Mavericks, the roster was completed with three retired players who had a huge impact on the NBA: Spain’s Pau Gasol, Germany’s Dirk Nowitzki and France’s Tony Parker.

The second team included only one current player, Serbia’s Nikola Jokić, who just so happens to be the reigning MVP. Alongside Jokić were four players who never quite became household names but helped establish the viability of European players in the NBA: Toni Kukoč and the late Drazen Petrović, both from Croatia, Lithuania’s Arvydas Sabonis and Serbia’s Peja Stojaković. All of those four except Stojaković have already been enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

Determining which of these players was truly the best is an impossibly subjective task, especially when many of them split their careers between the NBA and international leagues.

A few years ago, however, this writer argued that – judged solely on his exploits in the NBA – Nowitzki had the most important career of any European basketball player. He is sixth on the all-time scoring list, just above Wilt Chamberlain and right below Michael Jordan. The German was a 14-time All-Star and has both an NBA MVP and a finals