12 years ago today: Dirk Nowitzki passes Hakeem Olajuwon to become the NBA’s highest-scoring international player

Twelve years ago today, on Tuesday, November 11, 2014, Dirk Nowitzki caught the ball on the wing at American Airlines Center, rose into a catch-and-shoot 19-footer, and passed Hakeem Olajuwon on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. The Dallas Mavericks beat the Sacramento Kings 106-98. Nowitzki finished with 23 points. And for the first time, no player born outside the United States had scored more points in the NBA than the forward from Würzburg, Germany.

Olajuwon, the Nigerian-born Hall of Famer who won two titles and two Finals MVPs in Houston, had finished his career with 26,946 points. Nowitzki walked into the night needing 17. He left it at 26,953, alone in ninth place overall and alone atop the international list.

Seventeen points to a new top of the ladder

The setup was simple. A 17-year veteran in his 17th season, averaging a little over 20 a night, needed a good home game against a Kings team that arrived at 5-3. Sacramento jumped out early. Dallas trailed after a sluggish first quarter, then chipped away.

Rudy Gay led the Kings with 26 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. DeMarcus Cousins added 16 and 11. Ben McLemore scored 17. On the other side, Chandler Parsons poured in 19, Monta Ellis had 16, and Tyson Chandler finished with 14 points and 11 rebounds. The Mavericks shot 47.5 percent, made 10 threes, and forced 22 Sacramento turnovers.

Nowitzki’s line was classic late-prime Dirk: 7-of-12 from the field, 2-of-3 from three, 7-of-8 from the line, seven rebounds, three assists and a block in 34 minutes. The shot that mattered came with 8:56 left in the fourth — a midrange jumper that pushed him past 26,946.

Standing ovations and a Dream Shake joke

The sellout crowd of 19,663 gave him two standing ovations: one on the next dead ball, another a few minutes later when the arena screens ran a video of his milestone baskets. “It’s an honor,” Nowitzki said afterward. “To do it at home, it was even more special. Getting a standing ovation, it was great.”

He talked about the man he had just passed with the same soft reverence he brought to every scoring conversation. “Hakeem, to me, was one of the greatest. I grew up watching him in the 90s. His footwork, his touch, was next to no other. I’m really humbled to keep climbing the ladder, blessed to stay healthy, and play at a semi-high level, I guess.”

There was almost a perfect coda. Earlier in the night he had caught the ball on the block, reverse-pivoted and launched the one-legged fadeaway that defined his career — the shot he liked to call his own version of Olajuwon’s Dream Shake. It rimmed out. The record instead came on an ordinary catch-and-shoot 19-footer.

“I think you need a little athleticism for that move,” he said of the Dream Shake, deadpan. “The footwork, the shaking and baking wasn’t really my forte. I came up with a shot where you have to basically lean back and not be athletic at all and just hoist it up. I came up with my own Dream Shake. The white version.”

What the numbers looked like that night

• The mark: Olajuwon at 26,946. Nowitzki entered needing 17 and finished the night at 26,953 — ninth all-time, first among international players.
• The shot: Midrange jumper, 8:56 left in the fourth, catch-and-shoot. Not the fadeaway. Just Dirk being Dirk.
• The box: Dallas 106, Sacramento 98. Nowitzki 23-7-3. Parsons 19. Ellis 16. Chandler 14 and 11. Gay 26 for the Kings.
• The room: 19,663 at American Airlines Center. Two standing ovations. A video package of every previous milestone on the big screen.

From ninth to sixth, and still the international standard

The climb did not stop in November 2014. Nowitzki would pass Elvin Hayes and Moses Malone that season, keep going past Shaquille O’Neal and Wilt Chamberlain later, and retire in 2019 with 31,560 career points — sixth on the all-time list, all of them in a Mavericks uniform. Only Kobe Bryant, among the players ahead of him that night, had done all of his scoring with one franchise.

The overall scoring list has kept moving — LeBron James, born in Akron, sits alone at the top now — but the foreign-born mark Nowitzki took from Olajuwon that Tuesday still belongs to him. European and African stars remade the league he helped open; none of them has caught his 31,560.

By then he was already a champion. The 2011 title run — Finals MVP over Miami — had put the Mavericks in the East Room of the White House the following January. The big German who arrived as a skinny project in 1998 had become the face of a franchise and a measuring stick for every international big who followed.

Why that Tuesday still matters

Records move. Scoring lists shuffle. What remains from November 11, 2014, is the shape of the night: a quiet midrange jumper, a home crowd on its feet, and a German forward thanking a Nigerian center he grew up watching on grainy 1990s highlights.

Olajuwon had defined what a foreign-born star could be in the 1990s — footwork, titles, an unmistakable signature move. Nowitzki redefined it for the next generation: stretch big, one-legged fade, one city, one jersey. On a Tuesday in Dallas, with 17 points still needed at tip and 23 in the book by the end, he made the scoring list say the same thing the highlight reels already had.