At the appointed moment, Dirk Nowitzki and his 7-year-old son, Max, pushed a lever, which triggered the lifting of a mammoth cylindrical canvas. Several hundred onlookers in American Airlines ...

Chris Paul. Allen Iverson. Pat Riley. As I darted to the left and down the aisle at the far end of the theater, I bumped into my friend Dirk Nowitzki as he was heading to his seat in the front row.

Dirk Nowitzki, just 14 in the summer of 1992, watched the Barcelona Olympics with NBA players competing for the first time and gravitated toward the spectacular U.S. Dream Team featuring some of ...