Dirk Nowitzki now has something to take out of his disappointing season with the Mavericks, that ended with the biggest playoff upset to the Golden State Warriors. He has a MVP trophy.
Nowitzki ended the 2-year reign of friend Steve Nash and is the only European born player to win the award.
"It's still a little hard for me to be happy because of the way this season ended," Nowitzki said. "But this is an award for the regular season. That's how I've got to look at it and be proud."
The Mavericks had the 6th most amount of wins in NBA history and looked to be the clear-cut favorite to win the Championship. But they took an early exit when the 8th seed (The Golden State Warriors) eliminated them in 6 games.
Nowitzki now goes onto the very exclusive list of MVP not to win a playoff series. Other players who have done this are Moses Malone in 1981-82 , Malone again in '79, Wes Unseld in '68-69 and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975-76 (didn't make the playoffs).
Nowitzki got 1,138 points and 83 1st place votes while Steve Nash had 44 1st place votes and 1,013 points. Other players were Kobe Bryant (521 points), Tim Duncan (286), LeBron James (183), Tracy McGrady (110) and Chris Bosh (43).
Steve Nash took time out of preparing for game 5 of the Suns series with the Spurs to talk with the media about Nowitzki.
"I'm excited for him," Nash said. "He's obviously not the happiest camper right now but he deserves it and I think he should really enjoy this and allow this to kind of heal an unfortunate first round. Because he did have a great year and worked hard for it."
One more key stat about Nowitzki, is that he had the largest point per game decline in the playoffs compared the regular season since '82:
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