Crocodile Nowitzki

Nowitzki bounced back from his Finals meltdown to lead the Mavs to a league-best 67 wins last year. The team seemed destined for a title—in the league's history, seven of the eight teams that won 65 or more games went on to win the title—but in the first round of the playoffs, the Mavs drew the red-hot Golden State Warriors, and once again, Nowitzki shrank under pressure, shooting just 38 percent. In the final game of the series he went out like a lamb—finishing the game with more turnovers than field goals. Most tellingly, he didn't take the ball to the hoop even once, settling instead for long-range jumpers, a sign that he may fear the bruising physical contact that goes on under the hoop. It was the biggest upset in NBA playoff history.

If the Mavericks fail to win a championship this season, or at least reach the Finals, there will be pressure to overhaul the roster. Team owner Mark Cuban has said he will never move Nowitzki, but it's hard to see how the team would be drastically improved without trading him for another player. This summer, Lakers star Kobe Bryant, generally regarded as the best player in the league, said he wanted to leave Los Angeles and has since named Dallas as one of his top two destinations. Bryant's contract with Los Angeles runs out in 2009, and if he is available then, or sometime before, there would be tremendous pressure on Cuban to make a run for him, even if it means giving up Nowitzki.

For the first time in his career, Nowitzki did not spend the summer retooling some aspect of his game. Instead, he went on a five-week trip to Australia to clear his head. He slept in youth hostels, he dozed on the beach reading German novels and he let his hair and beard grow long. He drifted out at sea for days. He slept in a car for a week. For Nowitzki, it was a journey of self-discovery—similar to the traditional walkabout Aborigines take in their 16th year as a rite of passage—a time to consider where he had been and where he was going.

Sitting there in front of the fire, with nothing but the stars of the Southern Hemisphere above him, Nowitzki's mind raced through the past several months. The 67-win season. The promise of a championship. Then finally, walking off the court at Golden State, his opponents celebrating their improbable victory as confetti fell around them.

How strange it had been, seeing his former coach, Don Nelson, on the other side of the court. Nellie, who had traded up to draft him, who had proclaimed him Rookie of the Year, who had stood by him even as Mavericks fans booed that first year, now pacing the opposing sideline, exploiting the weaknesses of his one-time protégé.

And it had worked. Somehow it had taken Nowitzki out of his game. After one loss, he threw a trash can against a wall in frustration, but when it was finally over, all he wanted to do was disappear. On the flight home, he asked a team official if he could leave Dallas as soon as possible, but after checking in with the NBA, he was told no—he would have to stick around for another week or so. He could guess why. It was a poorly kept secret that he would win the MVP trophy.

Back in Dallas, he had hunkered down in his 5,500-square-foot Highland Park home, trying to shut out the world. He did his best to ignore sports talk radio and the papers, but he knew what people were saying about him—that he couldn't finish, that he lacked a killer instinct, and that once again, he had come up short when it mattered most. "We got hammered pretty good here in the media," he would later recall. "You know, we got to rip up the team. Dirk can't lead, blah, blah, blah. You know you hear all these things and it kind of pisses you off. I just wanted to get away."

It was easy to forget how far he had come, how far the Dallas Mavericks had come. When he was drafted in 1998, the Mavs were the laughingstock of the NBA. His first couple years they practiced in a facility open to the public, meaning that if he wanted to stay behind for extra work, as he often did, he was relegated to a side hoop. What a sight it had been, to see the 7-foot Nowitzki and the 6-foot-3 guard Steve Nash, each of them million-dollar athletes, chasing after errant shots to make sure they didn't interrupt the pick-up games in progress. Now the Mavs were a model franchise with a billionaire owner who didn't mind spending money on a practice facility.