“Dirk Nowitzki, anyone?”
This is how the Houston Chronicle’s Richard Justice began his column the day after Houston selected Donatas Motiejunas 20th overall in the 2011 NBA draft. It’s a hopeful sentence that falls flat on its face, bringing to mind delicate geniuses like Andrea Bargnani and Yi Jianlian; all the promise trapped inside those extremely tall men, who struggle with English as a second language, were raised facing the basket, and are aphenphosmphobic.
They were all the rage these past 10 years, like a bag of trendy car fresheners that promised to revitalize your favorite team but instead went stale after 15 minutes. General managers dug through foreign compost looking for a rare jewel they weren’t positive even existed, and if they couldn’t find it they’d hastily grab a bag of smelly dirt, pack it down real tight, let it sit overseas, and pray that one day it’d magically morph into something precious. Of course that’s ridiculous and impossible; smelly dirt is smelly dirt, no matter what you do to it.
No matter how you pose the question, there will never be another Dirk Nowitzki just as there will never be another Michael Jordan. Finals MVP aside, the things Dirk has done and continues to do—not only for himself, but for the dozens of teammates who’ve been fortunate enough to benefit from the gravitational defensive focus he summons just by standing on one side of the court—will never be equaled. The odds couldn’t be determined with a microscope.
Let’s take a more serious look at the Rockets inscrutable first round pick: He’s left handed and stands in as a legitimate seven footer, so words like “potential” and “upside” have been thrown around since he was 15-years-old. Despite that size he’s still known for shooting jumpers, a scary thing for someone who doesn’t threaten a defense with rolls to the basket on a pick and roll, allowing the opposition to stay wide and avoid collapsing. However, apparently, he does have a back to the basket game, which is rare in today’s league and might be a good crutch to rely on. If he can’t rebound though, it’s worthless. Several reports have informed the public that Motiejunas is somewhat of a “primma donna” who “sometimes appears content to be better than others without dominating them the way he’s capable.” Fantastic! An exact recipe for complete and undeniable failure. On the flip side he’s 20-years-old and will be playing for one of the tougher, less cerebral coaches in the league. A respected big man himself who could hopefully wise Montiejunas up. Combining that with a group of humbled teammates could either shape the gifted Lithuanian into a resilient big man, or shatter his apparent self-inflated ego. Once that happens, the broken pieces are difficult to reconstruct.
A superb scenario might be similar to what we saw from JJ Barea and Dirk Nowitzki in last year’s unexpected playoff run. It won’t come right away—more likely a few years down the line—but if Motiejunas can develop a jump shot that’s better than consistent, and force defenders in the pick and roll to shadow him instead of hedging out to defend the ball handler, then not only do speedy point guards have advantageous scoring lanes, but the domino effect of help defenders coming to shut down those paths to the basket should leave dead-eye shooters wide open beyond the three point line. So basically, Motiejunas will be improving the team’s three-point chances by setting a simple high screen. Sounds nice.
This scenario was previously described as being “superb” as opposed to merely “best case” because right now it’s just a hazy dream. Being overly generous with the time frame, snipe artists with seven foot bodies come along once every 10 years. To get one who can also handle the ball and carry an offense for quarters at a time is to effectively win the lottery.
I can’t tell the future. Maybe Donatas Motiejunas ends up defying overwhelmingly probable odds—in a transaction which saw his acquisition come by way of a financially motivated Brad Miller dumping—and makes a few All-Star teams, eventually turning the Rockets greatest weakness into its most imposing strength. A Houston bred utopia that would be.
We opened with a quote, and we’ll close with one as well. This one coming from the mouth of Motiejunas himself, describing his chest tattoo of an eagle clutching a basketball: “I really like the attitudes of eagles. They never give up. When they grab a fish or something else, they never let it go. It doesn’t matter. In a book, they write they find a skeleton of [an] eagle and there is no fish. It means that the fish beat him and killed him, but he didn’t let go”
Dirk Nowitzki he is not.
