Editor's note: This story originally published on April 3, 2019. On Wednesday night, the Dallas Mavericks will retire Dirk Nowitzki's No. 41 jersey before their game against the Golden State Warriors (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
Before stepping foot on American soil, 19-year-old Dirk Nowitzki played on a second-division team in his German hometown of Wurzburg that occasionally canceled practices to work on a farm owned by a teammate.
Sure, Nowitzki had managed to play his way onto the radar of some NBA teams and college programs. But he was far from a phenom.