Advertisement

Dirk Nowitzki given penalty in charity match for poorly executed dive

Dirty Tackle

NBA star Dirk Nowitzki and Bayern Munich goalkeeper Manuel Neuer held a match in Germany to benefit their respective charity organizations on Sunday. And during that match, Nowitzki showed that basketball players are catching up to footballers in the art of egregious flopping.

As Ball Don't Lie pointed out last week, Nowitzki happened to speak to the Dallas Morning News about flopping in basketball before the Miami Heat beat the San Antonio Spurs (or the San Francisco Spurs to Sergio Ramos) in the NBA Finals.

“We’re never going to get rid of it,” he said recently. “But you got to limit it. It’s part of sports. It’s part of winning. Some people are smart and do a little extra thing to kind of sell the call. To me, that’s part of sports.

“You don’t want the obvious ones, the really, really bad ones. I think we’d love to get rid of those."

Well, the 7-foot-tall Nowitzki displayed a really, really bad one for comedic effect in the charity match, taking a delayed tumble while a defender sat on the ground some distance in front of him. And to the Dallas Mavericks power forward's delight, he was awarded a penalty for his terrible acting, which he converted. He wasn't successful on another penalty attempt though, and the blown opportunity proved costly as Nowitzki's team (which included the likes of Lukas Podolski, Mats Hummels and Stefan Kießling) lost Neuer's team (with the likes of Ilkay Gündogan and Julian Draxler) 8-7. Neuer even scored twice himself.

But Nowitzki's performance wasn't limited to awful dives and missed penalties. He also added some odd facial expressions...

And, best of all, hugs...