Every sports fan overrates their favorite players. That’s just part of the experience. The result is countless hours spent trying to convince other fans your guy really is as great as you say he is, or was. Every fan is certain if others could only see the player how they do, they would get it. This is then internalized as disrespect, and round and round we go. We all do it, and to a degree, we’re probably all chasing ghosts.



With that out of the way… I really don’t think Dirk Nowitzki got the respect he deserved during his prime. As their careers wind down, Howard Beck recently examined the relationship and rivalry between Dirk and Dwyane Wade. He included this quote from Pat Riley, which was fed through the aggregation machine for a few days:



For about a three-year span Wade was, in Riley’s view, “the best player in the world.”



“Dwyane was better than Kobe at that time,” Riley says. “He had...