COLOGNE, Germany — Luka Doncic isn’t often considered the opening act for a grander, more prominent show to follow.
But when the EuroBasket tournament opens here Thursday at Lanxess Arena, Doncic’s leading sizzle for defending champion Slovenia against Lithuania will precede Dirk Nowitzki’s FIBA jersey retirement ceremony, a first for the German national team.
Call it the ultimate EuroMavs doubleheader.
Nowitzki’s historic honor will draw Mark Cuban, Jason Kidd, Nico Harrison and a supporting Mavericks contingent to Cologne, elicit a fresh wave of praise and reflection about his storied, worldwide career and prompt a new question to ponder for the many who follow the Mavericks and hope for Doncic to follow a similar winning path:
Is Doncic on track to one day surpass Nowitzki as the greatest European player of all time?
The next two weeks of EuroBasket play will add to the 23-year-old superstar’s already glittering international resume.
“In Europe, national team basketball is considered as important [as the NBA],” Slovenian sports commentator Matej Petek said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News last summer. “So if you want to be considered a great player in Europe, an all-time great, a FIBA great, you have to do it in FIBA national team basketball as well.”
By those EuroGOAT standards, several international players have dual-league credentials in the debate.
Recent retirees Pau Gasol won two championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and three EuroBasket titles and Olympic medals with Spain, and San Antonio Spurs legend Tony Parker finished as a four-time NBA champion and two-time FIBA Europe Player of the Year with France.
Croatia’s Drazen Petrovic served as a Europe-to-NBA trailblazer in the 1980s and early 1990s. Peja Stojakovic did the same over a nearly 20-year professional career that ended with the Mavericks’ 2011 championship alongside Dirk.
But to many abroad, caveats like Gasol and Parker’s co-starring roles alongside Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan, respectively, and other Europeans’ shorter NBA tenures detract from their contention against Nowitzki’s solo, comprehensive, consistent arguments.
Nowitzki was the focal point of the Mavericks franchise’s two NBA Finals runs and the 2011 championship, and he won the league’s regular-season MVP award in 2007.
Germany had little basketball history before Nowitzki’s rise, but he still led the national team to bronze at the 2002 World Cup and silver at EuroBasket in 2005, winning tournament MVP each time.
Then Germany qualified for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where Nowitzki carried the flag during the opening ceremony as one of the crowning moments in his FIBA career that continued for nine more years.
Know who else has had a similar start? Doncic.
At 18 years old in 2017, he played as the second-leading scorer in his first national team tournament to power Slovenia — a country smaller in population than Houston — past European mainstays for its first EuroBasket title.
Nine months later, Doncic propelled Real Madrid to the EuroLeague championship as MVP to cap a teenage-phenom season that should’ve prompted the Phoenix Suns or Sacramento Kings to draft him before the Mavericks traded up to No. 3.
NBA Rookie of the Year.
Slovenia’s 2020 Olympic triple-double dominator, one block from reaching the gold medal game against the United States.
Three-time All-Star and first-team All-NBA in four years.
A 20-3 record with the national team.
Doncic reached the NBA conference finals in his fourth season — quicker to the final-four playoff round than fellow European stars Giannis Antetokounmpo with the Milwaukee Bucks (Year 6 in 2019) and Nikola Jokic with the Denver Nuggets (Year 5 in 2020).
As Los Angeles Clippers and France foe Nic Batum said during the Olympics last year: “He’s the present, and he’s next.”
“He’s grown up a lot in the last five years,” said Goran Dragic, Doncic’s veteran Slovenian teammate and mentor. “He won EuroLeague, he won MVP, he’s had a successful NBA career so far. The numbers are unbelievable. He’s one of the best players in the world. I already kind of predicted that after [last] EuroBasket, but if I’m honest, I didn’t know that was going to happen to quickly. He’s just an unbelievable talent.
“It really amazes me every day what we see from him, and he’s got a nice future ahead of him.”
Slovenia’s EuroBasket repeat bid won’t come easy.
FIBA has referred to Group B as the “Group of Death” with medal contenders Slovenia, France, Germany and Lithuania in the same six-team pool.
Potential knockout-round opponents next week in Berlin include Serbia with Jokic — who’s also chasing Nowitzki’s credentials with two NBA MVPs — and Greece with Antetokounmpo — who’s earned NBA accolades and a Finals trophy like Nowitzki, but not meaningful FIBA success.
Nowitzki with his latest jersey retirement and title as EuroBasket “ambassador” will be there to watch it all.
“That’s something that’s so underrated, what Dirk did with the national team,” Petek said. “That’s why he’s in Europe considered as the best. I’m guessing probably not the consensus because everybody has an opinion, but the majority of the opinion is that Dirk, that sets him apart.
“He reached the top of the NBA and FIBA, international basketball. Giannis, Luka, Jokic, they still have yet to do that.”
