{"id":215,"date":"2013-11-27T08:53:41","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T13:53:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/?p=215"},"modified":"2013-11-27T22:50:30","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T03:50:30","slug":"dirk-nowitzki-becoming-free-agent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/2013\/11\/27\/dirk-nowitzki-becoming-free-agent\/","title":{"rendered":"Dirk Nowitzki Becoming Free Agent"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Credit:<\/a>
Credit: Bleacher Report<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bleacher Report ::\u00a0<\/strong>Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban will go superstar hunting for the third straight summer next offseason.<\/p>\n

But the prize of this pursuit\u2014Mavs\u00a0lifer Dirk Nowitzki\u2014should prove infinitely more attainable than Cuban’s previous targets (Deron Williams, Chris Paul and Dwight Howard).<\/p>\n

Nowitzki, who is in the final season of his current contract with Dallas, told\u00a0Dwain Price of the\u00a0Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that he intends to hit the open market next summer, but he’s more concerned with the present than the future:<\/p>\n

“I don’t really want to look forward too much. I’m not going to extend, obviously, I’m going to play the season out, then we can talk about the summer…So I want to have a good season. I want to have an injury-free season.”<\/p>\n

So far, news has been good on both fronts. The 35-year-old has played in each of Dallas’ first 15 games and is one of just 21 players in the league averaging better than 20 points per game (20.7 to be exact).<\/p>\n

With his scoring touch as strong as ever, he won’t be short on suitors next summer. But he’s never masked his desire to remain with the only franchise he’s ever known.<\/p>\n

“I really want to finish my career in Dallas,” he told\u00a0USA Today’s<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Sam\u00a0Amick\u00a0late last season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bleacher Report ::\u00a0Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban will go superstar hunting for the third straight summer next offseason. But the prize of this pursuit\u2014Mavs\u00a0lifer Dirk Nowitzki\u2014should prove infinitely more attainable than Cuban’s previous targets (Deron Williams, Chris Paul and Dwight Howard). Nowitzki, who is in the final season of his current contract with Dallas, told\u00a0Dwain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[123,124,43],"coauthors":[36],"class_list":{"0":"post-215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-news","8":"category-nba-topstory","9":"tag-drik-nowitzki","10":"tag-free-agent","11":"tag-mavericks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}