By Cathrin Gilbert
It took Nowitzki a year to condition his body to handle the pace and toughness in the American league. He soon split up with his German girlfriend of many years, Sybille, avoided parties and even limited visits with his parents to the summer break and Christmas. He had no time for a personal life.
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The NBA is a show. Millions of dollars are at stake, and the show is about muscles and tattoos, toughness and testosterone, in a world inhabited by Hollywood stars sitting on the sidelines, a world of fuzzy distinctions between groupies and fans. But this show is organized like a machine, one in which an athlete either functions or fails. There is tremendous pressure to succeed, and the fame and constant public scrutiny make it difficult for athletes to keep their lives private.
The tension between the two worlds, between the glamour and the pressure, can become enormous, forcing players to perform a constant balancing act between discipline and self-indulgence. Nowitzki seemed to have found the right balance. He celebrated his triumphs with his friend Nash. And whenever he would begin to stagnate as a player, Geschwindner would fly in and train his student until the follow-through on his shots was just right. It was Geschwindner who caught Nowitzki when he was on the verge of falling.
A Mentor and a Cheerleader
Today, Geschwindner lives in a castle in the Bavarian town of Peulendorf. As a student, he lived in an abandoned factory and drove his Porsche to protest marches. Geschwindner has a reputation for being difficult and extreme. He says things like: People who share emotion lose a part of themselves. He would occasionally bring his student books by Nietzsche or Joseph Conrad. Nowitzki stuck with him when Geschwindner was arrested on charges of tax evasion, and he paid more than €15 million ($21 million) in bail money to secure Geschwindner's release from custody. Geschwindner is Nowitzki's mentor, coach and therapist. He watches over and monitors his protégé. Friends say that at some point he was not only in control of Nowitzki's training and his game, but of his life, as well.
The Mavericks star was in a relationship with a cheerleader for a year and a half, but at some point the woman gave him an ultimatum: marry her or split up. He opted for the second choice -- on Geschwindner's advice. The aggrieved dancer went to Hollywood to try her hand at acting.
Nowitzki says that he always enjoyed not having to worry about anything. Even as a child, his mother, Helga, made all of his decisions for him, protecting her chicks like a mother hen. Nowadays, says Nowitzki, he wonders whether it was such a good idea to have taken so little responsibility.
Every morning, he would drive out of the garage of his $6 million (€4.3 million) mansion -- not far from where former President George W. Bush's neighborhood now lives -- in his $130,000 (€93,000) Mercedes AMG, and drive to the Mavericks' parking garage. In the evening, he would drive home again. Perhaps this is the only path a gifted athlete can take if he hopes to remain successful. Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher chose the same path. Perhaps it is simply the easiest path. At any rate, it isn't dangerous, because by staying out of the limelight, a player is able to avoid the critics, even as he loses his ability to recognize danger and to make emotional decisions.
In 2006, Nowitzki had already been playing in the NBA for seven years. Professional players last an average of four-and-a-half years. At 27, he almost singlehandedly led the Mavericks into the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat. A game and a half separated Nowitzki from the championship. The Mavericks pulled ahead, with two wins and no losses under their belt and in the third game, they were 13 points ahead with six minutes to go. But they went on to lose the game and the Finals.
Searching for Something
"I felt extremely empty in the ensuing few months," says Nowitzki. Even then, as he still does today, he kept asking himself the same question: Why me? And why did it have to happen shortly before the finish line?
Even winning the NBA's Most Valuable Player award a year later couldn't make the 2006 Finals failure any better.
Nowitzki was alone in his moment of defeat. Steve Nash had moved to Phoenix, and Nowitzki didn't have a girlfriend at the time. But the show went on, together with the self-indulgence and temptations. Nowitzki was searching for something, and what he found was a woman who called herself Christian Trevino.
Beaumont is a city in Texas, somewhere between Houston and the Gulf of Mexico. There are no streets without a Baptist church, no houses without American flags prominently displayed and no women without pink sunglasses.
A summer day, 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). At the Jefferson County Jail, the prisoners awaiting trial are kept in large holding cells, the men on the right and the women on the left. This is where Christian Trevino, whose real name is probably Crystal Taylor, is incarcerated. When we ask to see her, we are told that she no longer wants to talk. According to her mother, she plans to write her autobiography, partly to pay for her high legal fees.
Randy Stevens is a detective in Beaumont. They call him the "Crime Stopper." He has been dealing with the Taylor case for the last four years. It's the craziest story he has ever heard, says Stevens. It began when he was contacted by a dentist who had been waiting for months to be paid about $10,000 (€7,140) for working on Taylor's teeth. She was apparently still living in Woodlands, north of Houston, at the time, says Stevens. He tried to meet her there four times, but was unsuccessful. He notified a special government agency in Nashville, Tennessee, and then added the case to his files, complete with Taylor's mug shot. If he hadn't seen a report on television about the NBA star and his mysterious fiancée in early May, he would never have found Taylor. "Her tactics were simply too professional," says the Crime Stopper.
Fugitive in His House
When he questioned Taylor, says Stevens, she was nervous, began to cry and fed him a series of contradictory stories. "I didn't believe a word she said," says Stevens. Once she has served her sentence in Beaumont, he says, she will face her next conviction in St. Louis.
Since she was arrested on May 6, 2009, Nowitzki has not had any contact with Crystal Taylor. He has also not set foot in his house, where the police arrested her at 11 a.m., despite her attempt to escape through a window. He has been too concerned that he could be accused of having harbored a fugitive in his house.
A 2.13-meter (7-foot) cardboard figure is set up in the Nowitzki family painting business in Würzburg. The father has dressed the figure with one of his son's jerseys and a pair of his shorts. Nowitzki speaks quietly, saying that he knew nothing about his fiancée's past. He never tolerated any criticism of his girlfriend, even though his family was not pleased with his choice. His father called the relationship a lapse of taste. But he didn't care, says Nowitzki: "I loved her."
Applying for Custody
A friend who visited Nowitzki in Dallas in February says that Dirk seemed happier than he had been throughout his entire 11 years in the United States, and that he exuded a feeling of freedom. On the way home, the friend sent Nowitzki a text message: If this is the woman for you, you should go through with it. Perhaps, says the friend, Dirk was also proud of the fact that he had finally gained control over his own life, and that he had found his own way, despite all the drama in the world of professional basketball.
A prenuptial agreement was to be drawn up this February. The attorneys needed Christian Trevino's birth certificate to complete the paperwork, but she kept finding new excuses for not being able to provide it. In April, Geschwindner hired a private detective.
The Texas dentist was apparently not the only one Crystal Taylor had cheated. She forged checks in St. Louis and allegedly continued to do so during her five years on probation. Investigators have uncovered 16 names she apparently used as aliases.
Nowitzki is sitting in his father's leather chair, wearing shorts but no shoes. He isn't quite sure what will happen next. He is still considering whether to play for Germany at the European championship in Poland in September. When he flies back to Dallas in September, Nowitzki will have to find a new life. He would probably be better off forgetting everything else.
His fiancée has announced, from prison, that she is pregnant. The detective doesn't know if it's true. According to Stevens, Taylor hasn't taken a pregnancy test here in Beaumont. Nowitzki doesn't know either. But he has applied for custody, just to be on the safe side.
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