Dirk's Dad Was Sick During Warriors Series

There are never really any good excuses in sports. It's a job like any other, and athletes are expected to put their personal lives behind them and handle their biz.

But it doesn't always work that way, and many fans accepts this. So for everyone who trounced Dirk Nowitzki in the wake of the dramatic Mavs upset, chew on this bit from The Dallas Morning News:

While the top-seeded Mavericks were getting shocked by Golden State in the first round of last spring's playoffs, the public never knew that Nowitzki's father, Jörg, was undergoing surgery in Dallas.

[...]

"It was not easy for him to deal with the pressure of the playoffs and my dad's surgery at the same time," Dirk's sister Silke e-mailed from the family's hometown of Würzburg, Germany. "But Dirk is good at being able to focus on his game when he is on the court."

The author speculates that Dirk's held this info back so as to not have "the slightest whiff of excuse in the air after the Golden State debacle." And that's probably because we're going to wonder now if these issues played a part in Dirk's poor showing. Not to excuse him for failing, or blame him for not blocking them out, but just out of natural curiosity.

Point of order: Dirk's family has declined to specify the nature of the surgery, but definitely didn't make it sound like a minor procedure.