Dallas Mavericks: Dirk Nowitzki the real MVP of All-Star weekend

NBA All-Star weekend is officially over with Team LeBron completing a comeback on Team Giannis Sunday to send us all home. Although many players, including some Dallas Mavericks, were involved Dirk Nowitzki was the MVP of it all.

Kyle Kuzma. Jayson Tatum. Joe Harris. Hamidou Diallo. Kevin Durant. What do these five guys have in common? None of them worked as hard as Dirk Nowitzki during this year’s All-Star weekend. In fact, there’s not one player in the league who had a bigger task last weekend than the big German for the Dallas Mavericks.

Coming in to it, the NBA made it pretty clear that the league would be celebrating Dirk’s career during the All-Star break, along with some other guy that played for the Bulls for a year. Aside from being an honorary All-Star via commissioner Adam Silver, Dirk Nowitzki was also a competitor in the Three-Point Contest and the honorary coach for the Rising Stars Team World.

This gave Dirk something to do on all three nights of the weekend of superstars, something that doesn’t happen very often. Not only did he have something to do, he did all three of those things at a rate that very few would be able to at 40 years old.

So when will All-Star weekend include an overall MVP award? It is kind of shocking that they don’t have one already, right? Adam Silver isn’t giving away nearly enough hardware just yet.

For that reason, I am nominating and dubbing Dirk Nowitzki as the MVP of All-Star weekend. This award will henceforth be retired as no player in the league will ever be able to do it as well as Dirk did it this year. That is just a matter of fact.

Let’s take a look back at some of Dirk’s more memorable moments from this past weekend.

It started with his coaching effort. Although he was the coach of the losing team, it is hard to argue that he was leading the underdog to a close finish.

Dirk may not have won the three-point contest, but he did outshoot Kemba Walker, Seth Curry, Khris Middleton and tied with Damian Lillard. That is a pretty great accomplishment for the oldest and tallest guy in the competition. A lot of people didn’t even think he would finish.

To top it all off, Dirk went 3-3 from three-point land in the actual All-Star game, finishing with 9 points in only three minutes of game time. For those who need a little help with the mental math, that means Dirk’s numbers put him at 108 points per-36. Basically MVP worthy. Eat your heart out, Kevin Durant.

And, of course, no week is complete without some solid Dirk humor.

https://twitter.com/BleacherReport/status/1097329061204918273

Even the Queen of Dallas was there to enjoy the festivities with her man.

Dirk Nowitzki is the greatest thing that has ever happened to the Dallas Mavericks and, after this week, is the greatest thing to ever happen to All-Star weekend. Dirk truly is the real MVP and no one can dispute it anymore.