Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki on Dwight Howard: ‘We’d love to have him’

Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki is trying his hand at playing recruiter with Dwight Howard.

“I reached out to him and told him we’d love to have him,” Nowitzki said Thursday, according to ESPN. “That’s really about it. It’s not like we call each other every day.”

Nowitzki, who has been very vocal about how much he wants to play alongside another superstar such as Howard, said that he hasn’t been overly aggressive just yet.

“I haven’t written him a letter. We’ve just had a little phone contact, and that’s about it,” Nowitzki said.

Nowitzki, of course, was pretty tight-lipped about the details of their conversation.

“He’s just weighing out his options,” Nowitzki said. “I’m sure he has a couple of meetings set up for whenever that might be in early July. Hopefully the Mavs are one of those teams, and we’ll go from there.

“To me, when he’s healthy, he’s the most dominant big man in the league. He showed it at the end of the season when he was right and what he can still do and can dominate on both ends of the floor if he’s healthy. He can still use his athleticism. He’s a beast on both ends of the floor. I’d love to play with a guy you can throw the ball in the post and I’ll just be out there spreading the floor. On the defensive end of the floor, a guy who can protect the rim like that is obviously a luxury.

“We’d love to have him, but so would the other teams with cap room, which is a couple. We’ll just wait and see what happens.”

Nowitzki’s tactic apparently differs from Kobe Bryant’s.

In an interview with ESPN earlier this month, Bryant said that he wants to be the last person to talk to Howard.

“For me, you kind of let him do his due diligence and then move in and talk to him and figure out if this is a place he wants to be,” Bryant said told ESPN. “We all want him here. But then that’s when the selling begins [after Howard is courted by other teams]. You don’t start the selling process right before he goes and does all this stuff. You want to get the last word. You want to have the final word and the closing argument.”

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