The date was Feb. 5, 1999. The place was Seattle, Wash. It was Dirk Nowitzki’s first game as a member of the Dallas Mavericks.
The game, which came during an NBA lockout season, took on a different flavor of hype because it pitted two native sons from Germany -- Seattle’s Detlef Schrempf and the Mavericks’ Nowitzki – going against each other.
Schrempf was entering his 14th season, while Nowitzki was in his first and had been touted by Mavericks coach Don Nelson as the player who would win the 1998-’99 season’s rookie of the year award.