NBA News: A Look At Dirk Nowitzki's Jersey Retirement Ceremony

The Dallas Mavericks honored the franchise’s longest-tenured player Dirk Nowitzki at his jersey retirement ceremony following their 99-82 win over the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday, January 5.

The proceedings opened with a short recap of Nowitzki’s career as a Maverick before NBA Commissioner Adam Silver kicked off the ceremony with a few words to welcome everybody in attendance and those watching around the world to one of the franchise’s most important moments.

Nowitzki’s longtime teammates were also in attendance at the event in the form of Ian Mahinmi, Caron Butler, Brian Cardinal, J.J. Barea, Shawn Marion, Tyson Chandler and Peja Stojakovic.

Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd was the first to speak and opened up his speech by jokingly asking Nowitzki whether he would consider returning to the franchise as a player on a 10-day contract.

“You changed the game. Now everybody is shooting threes. But the biggest thing is that you’ve always been a champion [since] day one. Dallas has watched you grown to become the man you are today. So thank you for approving the trade to bring me back to fulfill my dream and that’s to win a championship,” Kidd happily remarked to the applause of the fans at the American Airlines Center.

Another video package was played with a multitude of personalities who had been around Nowitzki for his entire career reliving the person that he was on the court and off the court.

Next to speak was Mavericks owner Mark Cuban who further detailed his love and admiration for Nowitzki and everything that he had done in his entire career, unveiling a model concept for a statue that will be erected outside of the arena.

Nowitzki himself took to the podium next as cheers of “MVP” rained down upon him.

“Thank you guys from the bottom of my heart for making this journey incredible and thank you for taking in a long, lanky kid over 20 years ago and making him one of your own. I’ll be always grateful,” Nowitzki said to the fans.

Nowitzki retired from the NBA with career distinctions of being sixth on the league’s all-time leaders for points in the regular season (31,560), 26th in rebounding (11,489), a 14-time All-Star, 12 All-NBA selections, awarded the 2006-07 league MVP, 2010-11 NBA champion and Finals MVP, all in 21 years with the Mavericks.