Don Nelson’s memorial in Dallas brought together many of the people who shaped his extraordinary basketball life. Also, people whose basketball Don shaped. Yet one of his most important former player was missing from the room. Dirk Nowitzki could not make the trip to Texas, leaving Steve Nash with the unusual task of delivering a farewell from one legend to another.
What followed began with a family explanation before quickly turning into the kind of irreverent joke Nelson would have loved.
“I really, really wish I could be there today with all of you. But I’m with my parents right now in Europe,” Steve Nash read straight from the letter. “They need me here at the moment. And I know Nelly would understand because he had such a great connection with my family.”
While it may sound distressing, Steve Nash cleared the air.
Before reading the letter, Nash explained why Nowitzki couldn’t attend the memorial. The former Mavs star lives in Sweden during the summer and his parents were visiting him there for the first time. “He wasn’t able to make the long journey,” Nash told the gathering, explaining that his former teammate had asked him to say a few words on his behalf.
That explanation gave the memorial a deeply personal dimension. Nowitzki could not stand at the podium himself, but he still found a way to make his presence felt through the person who had shared so much of his early NBA journey.
Once Nash began reading the letter, the tone immediately changed.
“Dear coach,” Nowitzki wrote, before turning his attention toward his former teammate. “If I could ask you one thing today, it would just be: why did you let Nash have the ball so much?”
The crowd laughed. Nash stopped reading long enough to defend himself.
“Hand on. That greedy bugger,” he joked. “I spoonfed him for like six years here. I mean, I bought him two meals a day for six years.”
It was funny because the joke carried decades of history behind it. Suddenly, Nash pulled out another letter and said, “This is actually Dirk’s letter.”
Nash and Nowitzki developed their friendship in Dallas under Don Nelson, who coached the Mavs from 1997 to 2005. Their relationship became one of the defining partnerships of that era, even though Nash left for Phoenix in free agency.
Beneath the initial comedy, Nowitzki’s letter carried genuine gratitude toward Don Nelson.
“He was funny; He was loud; He was always joking. No filter. He was truly one of a kind. And he was the ultimate players’ coach. I don’t think there was a player in the history of this game who benefited from Nelly more than me,” Nash continued, reading Dirk’s words.
Nowitzki remembered arriving in Dallas as a young German prospect and encountering a coach who believed in him before most of the basketball world understood what he could become.
He also emphasized the bond Nelson formed with his family, particularly his father, and with his longtime mentor, Holger Geschwindner. That relationship helped make Don Nelson’s influence personal rather than merely professional.
The entire letter made Nowitzki’s absence from the memorial feel less like an omission and more like a reminder of what Don Nelson meant to him.
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The post “I’m With My Parents…They Need Me”: Steve Nash Reads Dirk Nowitzki’s Emotional Letter at Don Nelson’s Memorial appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.