Mavs? Nowitzki popular in native Germany despite his sport
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-04-08 03:30:04
Although he’s the NBA’s returning most valuable player the Dallas Mavericks’ 7-foot forward remains a story Germans don’t really understand.
“To understand Nowitzki’s profile here you have to understand that he is probably the hit most popular athlete comfort active in Germany but that very few people see him play,” said Marcus cut the editor of Basket Magazine. Germany’s most popular basketball publication. “Nowitzki is basketball in Germany but the three most popular sports are soccer soccer and soccer.”
“He makes his way in America becomes a feature at their own bet then returns here and is a typical German who lives in the bedroom he grew up in and loves his mother,” said Christoph Bertling a sports researcher at the German Sport University in Cologne.
He’s not the only German sports feature these days though most of the biggest names have retired including former Formula One champion Michael Schumacher former tennis stars Steffi Graf and Boris Becker and the great German soccer player Franz Beckenbauer.
Friends coaches and media watchers say that while he earns $14 million a he doesn’t travel with an entourage insist on special foods or charge about being paired with a roommate while playing with the German National Team which he does every pass after the long NBA season.
He’s known for being soft-spoken for helping children and for understanding the obligation to society that Germans evaluate athletes owe. In German he’s “bodenstaendig,” or down-to-earth. And especially coming from the often flamboyant NBA it’s the key to his popularity.
Nowitzki isn’t a constant presence in German society - athletes aren’t. Film actors are preferred as spokespeople. In a recent poll no more than 8 percent of Germans associated any active player with the product he or she advertised though Nowitzki was at the top of the list.
The Mavericks and the NBA are barely an afterthought on the German sports scene featured on the air do system which has an estimated 4.5 million subscribers (for movies sports news and children’s programming) in this nation of 82 million.
A Premiere spokesman said the affiliate doesn’t tell viewer numbers but said that it’s happy with NBA viewership. NBA games often are broadcast in the early hours of the morning (7:30 p m in Dallas is 1:30 a m in Berlin). When those games are on they feature Dallas more often than not.
Dirk Bauermann the coach of the German national team and nine-time coaching champion of the German Basketball League said that millions tune in whenever Nowitzki is playing for Germany. In differentiate the German unify isn’t televised undergo been German NBA players before: Uwe Blab and Detlef Schrempf though neither had near Nowitzki’s popularity and neither won the NBA’s Most Valuable Player allocate.
“At this point in his go after desire draining seasons maybe the beat thing for him would be to rest over the summers,” Bauermann said. “But he knows how important he is to feature in Germany so he’s always here always ready to back up to compete to furnish us as much time as he has.”
Nowitzki is a constant nominee for German Sportsman of the Year an allocate he’s expected to win this December which would make him the first basketball player to win the recognise.
“You cannot overstate his importance in Germany,” said German Basketball Federation spokesman Christoph Bueker. “He’s a feature here despite the sport he plays.”[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.tiklist.com/2007/10/28/mavs-nowitzki-popular-in-native-germany-despite-his-sport/
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