My family and an early experience with Dirk Nowitzki (added video of AAC last Sunday)

thenavarro · June 17, 2011 11:46AM

Since I usually show pics of my autograph adventures with my daughter, thought I'd show one from 2001 before she was around. My son was only 3, and Dirk was yet to be the "star" that he is today. One of my childhood friends was one of the assistant trainers for the Mavs, and he took us back into the private areas of Reunion Arena after the game. We got to meet most of the Mav's, get some autographs, and they were really cool. We met Dirk's mom, and his shooting coach, and I guess his mom wasn't used to her son being an NBA player yet, as she was quite excited to see my son wearing a miniature version of her son's jersey. She asked if she could take some pics of our son while we were waiting on her son to come out of the locker area. When Dirk came out, she called him over and introduced us to him, and this is one of the pics we got with him. He liked my son, and called over Steve Nash, and he sat in the floor with Nash and played toddler video games with my son. Very cool experience, especially now that he's turned into one of the stars of the league. My son doesn't like sports anymore, but on his wall to this day, he has this picture, his signed Dirk jersey from that night, and our ticket stub from that night.

mknez · June 17, 2011 11:50AM

Great story Mike! Nice to see one of the good guys win it all.

cpamike · June 17, 2011 11:58AM

That is so cool Mike. Thanks for taking the time to share that story. I always thought that Dirk would be a good guy to meet and Nash is one of my favorite basketball players.

I wish I took more pictures of players when I was a kid, but I didn't want to bother them and enjoyed talking to them instead. I meet Guy LaFleur, Marcel Dionne, Ron Greschner, Phil Esposito, John Davidson, to name a few. Those were the days.

cubfan89 · June 17, 2011 12:57PM

Hey Mike, I'm back!
That's an awesome story & auto picture!
Congrats to you & your Mavs, they truly deserve it brother!

illinifan912 · June 17, 2011 4:54PM

great story btw did you go to the parade?

stevek · June 17, 2011 7:52PM

Great pic - that's what it should be all about.

thenavarro · June 18, 2011 6:28AM

<< <i>great story btw did you go to the parade? >>

We couldn't make the parade because of work, but we did get to go to the American Airlines Center last Sunday night for the Game watch party. It was a lot of fun, the place was LOUD, people were dancing all around, yelling, it was basically like being at the game without the game

Here's my cell phone video of the final few minutes of the game and the aftermath. You can even see yours truly with my new Dirk shirt at around the 6 minute level if I remember correctly. Video is choppy as the whole place was vibrating. Very cool night.

My video