Watching Dirk Nowitzki, Ghost and a Machine

Last Tuesday—some 17 years after his NBA debut, nine years after winning his lone MVP award, and four and a half years after leading the Dallas Mavericks to their only title—Dirk Nowitzki picked up a dead ball near the basket and decided to get some quick calisthenics in. He jumped for a one-handed dunk and flubbed it. His feet some insufficient number of inches from the floor, he accomplished nothing more than sandwiching the ball between his palm and the rim, where it stuck for a moment before rolling back down when his airtime ran out.

Lacking the height and athleticism required to touch a regulation basketball rim, I don't know exactly how Dirk felt at that moment, but I imagine he experienced the equilibrium-compromising strain of physical frustration that feels like a splash of cold water to the spine. Having a jam attempt cut short, and in such absolute and embarrassing fashion, must be a sensation at once equal and opposite to that of thinking there's one more stair on a staircase than there really is.

If it bothered Nowitzki, he didn't show it. He corralled the ball with a chuckle, flipped it to the baseline referee, and later made a goof on Twitter. The basketball internet largely took this sequence as an affirmation of his jolly character, evidence of the self-effacing humility with which the 37-year-old has navigated his career's later stages. Nowitzki may be the most reliably joyful of the NBA's elder statesmen, a counterpoint to Kobe Bryant's self-serious staginess, to Tim Duncan's noble trudge, to Kevin Garnett's sage mania.

In addition to his apparently inherent sunny disposition, Nowitzki has cause to smile, even at such rude, duffed-dunk proof of his body's deterioration. He is playing fine basketball for a good team, as he has his whole career. Although it seems unlikely that he'll ever be part of another contender, it seems just as unlikely that he'll ever be a slouch on a squad full of slouches.

For a long time, the Mavericks were aspirants who couldn't take the final step; then they became one of the more surprising and cooperative champions in recent history. Now, with Nowitzki still at the elbow and Rick Carlisle still on the sideline and an annual influx of whichever castoffs and weirdos the league sees fit to shuttle their way, the Mavericks are the team that cannot be bad. Dirk, as always, is their leader.

On the court, the Mavericks look like everything has gone according to plan. They play as if their ideal configuration involves the post-Brooklyn version of Deron Williams, the post-Achilles-surgery version of Wesley Matthews, the apocalyptic center rotation of Zaza Pachulia and Javale McGee, and a stable of backup guards that includes Raymond Felton and Devin Harris, the latter of whom basketball's more radical historians contend once played in an All-Star Game. They move the ball from the strong side to the weak, throw neat entry passes, manufacture open threes, and turn out 105 points per 100 possessions.

In truth, just about none of their roster-building has worked out as envisioned. The present rotation is nothing so much as a kind of Plan E, arrived at after years of offseason misfortune. The champion Mavericks let Tyson Chandler walk in the hopes of luring Deron Williams back to his hometown in the summer of 2011; after getting Chandler back a couple years later, they again let him go this past summer in pursuit of DeAndre Jordan. Neither plan came to fruition, and other deals made between those sad bookends—trades for Lamar Odom in December 2011 and Rajon Rondo in December 2014—landed somewhere between tragedy and extremely broad comedy. Nowitzki aside, hardly a player on the current roster was Dallas's first choice.

The crispness with which the Mavericks now play in spite of perpetual fallings-through may be attributed in part to Williams and Matthews looking better than expected, but primary credit goes to the German. His skill set remains singular, and uniquely well suited to the coach with years of practice exploiting it. That tinker-toy-and-rubber-band style, all wrenched limbs and squeaky feints and steep jumpers, is still fundamentally not all that possible to defend against, and Carlisle leverages the attention it attracts into driving lanes and corner threes. Nowitzki draws a double-team, and the rest of the Mavericks cycle through the open space it creates.

This is not to say that Nowitzki serves only as a totem tall decoy. Tuesday's game against the Sacramento Kings, the one with that botched dunk, eventually turned into a double-overtime thriller, and Nowitzki applied his elbowy expertise at every moment of need. Williams eventually hit the deciding shot, but it was Nowitzki who shepherded the Mavericks through the preceding 15 minutes of game time. He made five of his final six shots and scored 12 points from the midpoint of the fourth quarter on. He dropped in a fadeaway over DeMarcus Cousins and hurled a full-court outlet pass to Matthews for a bucket and a foul. He made a top-of-the-key three. With Dallas down five late in the second overtime, he caught the ball on the wing, dribbled once, stepped back, and hit the sort of rickety, knock-kneed triple that seems all the more affecting for the afflictions of its author, like an old song from some cirrhotic crooner. This one made Williams's game-winner possible.

The Mavericks celebrated like they had won a championship, because they won't. Set next to the late-career successes of Nowitzki's old nemesis Duncan in San Antonio, this might seem a little sad, his team all clutching and hugging and falling to the floor over a regular-season home victory against a bottom-feeder, but great players have a way of manufacturing endings that fit their personalities. Kobe makes sense as a blown-out version of the marathoner who swears he's not in it to impress but soaks up adulation at the finish line, KG as a sweat-steamed pseudo-coach, Duncan as a real-life Giving Tree. As for Dirk, there has always been the feeling that he derives a little more pleasure from the daily acts of the game than most. He seems to love the sheer improbability of his approach being such an effective one, the way his contortions connect with the rest of the stronger and sleeker basketball ecosystem.

Nowitzki functions as the fulcrum of a similarly sideways team, one that runs clean sets and ekes out wins and sits in the middle of the playoff pack in the Western Conference. This team's ceiling is probably the second round, and its only shot at historical significance is to provide a first-round death knell to one of the NBA's ongoing experiments—the left-brained Rockets, say, or the gruff Grizzlies. In the meantime, the Mavericks have a good chance to win every night, and so Nowitzki has good reason to play. That's not the highest form of relevance, but it's something to smile about.