When Dirk Nowitzki showed up in his first year with the Dallas Mavericks, he was relatively unknown. People around the league had only a couple opportunities to actually see him play live and he never really boasted in his abilities leading up to the draft. Part of this is the reason he fell all the way to number 9 in the 1998 NBA Draft.
In fact, shortly after Dirk Nowitzki was drafted, people began to compare him to Detlef Schrempf, the only reasonably respectable German to hit the NBA up until that point. In that interview, the interviewer asked Dirk if he thought he would be as good as Detlef.