"We were on the train to watch the track and field competition, if my memory serves me correctly, and the kid from Germany knew everything.

He knew the Olympic swimmers. He knew the Olympic shot putters. He could recite the entire starting lineup of the German soccer team.

But when I asked, at those 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, if he knew anything about German basketball, both the kid and his dad gave me blank stares.

You mean you didn't know, I said, that the best player on the Dallas team in the NBA is a 22-year-old from Germany?

I'll never forget their answer: They both started laughing.

It was as if I'd told them that Willie Nelson had just re-recorded 99 Luft Balloons.

But over the years, I have realized that I couldn't fault my old father-and-son German friends. The Dallas Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki, you see, has always been an acquired taste.

In this, Dirk's adopted land, we understood immediately that tonight, any night, it was good to let it be Lowenbrau.

Sprockets, the Mike Myers-inspired Saturday Night Live skit, proved to be an instant classic.

I even get German techno music. My iPod has a Scooter playlist.

But on both sides of the Atlantic, it seemed, it took awhile to translate the basketball majesty of Dirk Nowitzki.

They get it now, of course. Nowitzki is as big a hero in his native Wurzburg as he is here, the place where he's earned more than 196 million German marks.

In this, however, his 11th trip to the NBA playoffs, converts have been signing up almost nightly.

The latest -- ex-coach and current ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy, who called Nowitzki's Tuesday night performance "legendary."

The loudest -- TNT renaissance man Charles Barkley, who insists that he told us so.

With a victory tonight in Game 5 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Nowitzki and the Mavericks can earn a desperately awaited return trip to the NBA Finals.

And as focused and unstoppable as Nowitzki seemed in the Mavs' brow-raising, second-round sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers, he's been even more convincing in the first four games against the Thunder."