{"id":968150,"date":"2026-07-30T02:50:39","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T02:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/968150\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T02:50:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T02:50:39","slug":"former-maverick-lists-dirk-nowitzki-among-best-leaders-he-played-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/968150\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Maverick lists Dirk Nowitzki among best leaders he played with"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Maverick Zaza Pachulia, a 16-year veteran of the NBA who now works as a consultant with the Golden State Warriors, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/7466449\/2026\/07\/27\/nba-best-leaders-zaza-pachulia\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recently penned a piece for The Athletic<\/a> where he listed some of the best leaders he ever played with during his lengthy career.<\/p>\n<p>Unsurprisingly, the\u00a0Mavs legend Nowitzki was one of three players Pachulia named, with the former center saying Dirk had a &#8220;great work-humor balance.&#8221; Pachulia also lauded Warriors guard Stephen Curry and another former Mavericks teammate, Jason\u00a0Kidd, who just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallasnews.com\/sports\/mavericks\/article\/masai-ujiri-jason-kidd-mavericks-coach-search-22267932.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">parted ways with Dallas after five seasons as its head coach<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Every day was fun with him,&#8221; Pachulia said of Nowitzki, who holds the\u00a0record for most seasons played with one team after spending all 21 years of his\u00a0NBA career in Dallas. &#8220;But when the preparation for the game started, he would have his game face on. &#8230; To me that was leadership&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pachulia spent just one season in Dallas playing with Dirk, but Nowitzki&#8217;s career spanned the entirety of Pachulia&#8217;s, and the 6-11 Georgian center spent plenty of time trying to cover the Mavs&#8217; big German.<\/p>\n<p>Pachulia spent two seasons in Milwaukee, where Kidd was his head coach for the 2014-15 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He was such an important part of my career,&#8221; Pachulia said of Kidd. &#8220;I had the best year of my career with him in 2014-15 with the Milwaukee Bucks. &#8230;\u00a0He helped everyone on the team to become proactive instead of reactive.\u00a0That was one of the things I truly learned from him: be proactive. Read the play ahead of time. Understand what\u2019s going to happen.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Pachulia also credited the Warriors&#8217; icon Curry, crediting the surprising care and leadership he viewed from the future Hall of Famer as the team&#8217;s best player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Maverick Zaza Pachulia, a 16-year veteran of the NBA who now works as a consultant with the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":968151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[1260,62,328838,328839,349118,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-968150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-tp-dallas-mavericks","tag-tp-jason-kidd","tag-tp-dirk-nowitzki","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117006658916815995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=968150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/968150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/968151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=968150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=968150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=968150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}