DALLAS — Dirk Nowitzki’s place in the pantheon of Dallas-Fort Worth athletes, and in the hearts and minds of fans, could not be more secure.
He’s the sixth-leading scorer in NBA history. He led the Mavericks to their only championship. He willed the franchise for 21 seasons, the most by an NBA player who played for only one team.
On Christmas morning, though, Nowitzki’s basketball career and his humanity as a beloved Dallasite will be celebrated in the form of art. His legacy will be cast in a permanence that’s hard to fathom.
The Dirk Nowitzki statue will be unveiled during an 11 a.m. “All Four One” ceremony on American Airlines Center’s South Plaza, a few steps from, appropriately, Dirk Nowitzki Way. It’s a much-anticipated, albeit chilly, prelude to the 1:30 p.m. Mavericks-Lakers game inside warmer AAC.
To grateful Mavericks fans The Dirk might as well be the David, The Thinker, Great Sphinx and Venus de Milo molded as one, so let’s meet the master sculptor and designer who spent two-plus years creating it: Omri Amrany.
“In many ways what we do becomes the history of the nation,” Amrany said. “You do it today and 200 years from now it still will be there.
“I don’t know if the stadium will stay, but for sure Dirk’s sculpture will go somewhere, whether it’s to a new stadium or a museum. These are human-witnessing events that people will cherish for many, many years to come, while all those architectural buildings will probably disappear.”
Earlier this week Amrany, 68, traveled from his Chicago-area home to oversee installation of The Dirk’s base and statue, and naturally he will be present for Sunday’s ceremony.
As one of the country’s most noted and prolific artisans of sports statues, he has been part of many such ceremonies.
His commissioned statues include those of Michael Jordan (1994); Magic Johnson at Michigan State (2003) and Los Angeles (2004); Wilt Chamberlain (2004); Gordie Howe (2007); Jerry West (2011); Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (2012); Shaquille O’Neal (2017); and David Beckham (2019).
It turns out the Mavericks governor Mark Cuban wasn’t exaggerating when, on the April 9, 2019 night of Nowitzki’s retirement announcement he promised to commission “the biggest, most badass statue ever.”
Amrany and his wife, Julie Rotblatt-Amrany, have created larger monuments, sports and non-sports alike, that encompassed multiple figures, but the Nowitzki statue and base combination is the tallest that any of Studio Rotblatt Amrany’s eight masters have sculpted of a single sports figure.
It’s nearly 24 feet high. The statue portion is more than 12 feet tall. That is bigger than those of Jordan (eight feet) and Johnson (nine feet) and shorter than the Vince Lombardi statue (14 feet), though the Lombardi base and statue are a combined 21 feet.
Sculpted in white bronze, the Nowitzki statue weighs about 1,500 pounds. Its base weighs more than 8,000 pounds. That’s nearly five tons combined.
For artists and aesthetes, scale conveys a subject’s importance, though Mavericks fans would argue that even a statue several times larger than The Dirk wouldn’t reflect his relevance to the Mavericks and North Texas.
Besides, any work of art’s beauty and profoundness lie in the detail. Other than the obvious that the statue is that of Nowitzki shooting his iconic one-legged fadeway and Nowitzki revealing last week on 97.1 FM that the hair, beard and uniform are that of 2010-11 championship season Dirk, fine details have been closely guarded.
“In every sculpture, we try to give personality,” Amrany said. “And I’ve got to say that during one of the discussions we had with Dirk and Jessica, his wife, she had some ideas. I started to incorporate some of her ideas into the piece and I think it was a huge contribution.”
He said the last of several meetings he had with Nowitzki was when Dirk and his friend and mentor, Holger Geschwindner, came to the Illinois foundry and watched part of the process, in which castings are produced by melting metal into liquid, then allowing it to solidify.
Amrany said some art connoisseurs are surprised to learn that he collaborates with statue subjects, but he notes that Michelangelo and other famous artists through the ages have had similar dialogue.
“Our job as an artist is not to come down from our Mount Olympus and tell you what’s right or wrong,” he said. “It’s to climb to your Olympus and have a discussion and come together with a piece that’s maybe never been done before.”
Born in Israel to Jewish immigrant parents, Amrany was an Israeli Defense Forces paratrooper from 1972 to 1975. In ensuing years, immersing as artist helped him through post-combat stress disorder.
Omri and Julie met in 1985 while working in the same Pietrasanta, Italy, studio. They married two years later and in 1989 settled in the Chicago area.
Much of Omri’s work, whether painting, sculpting or wall tapestries, had been “to push the limits on the human figure,” so gravitating to athletes was natural.
Especially while living in Chicago during the rise of Jordan and the Bulls dynasty. Shortly after Jordan’s first retirement, Omri and Julie were commissioned to create the statue that would come to be known as The Spirit.
The pose of Jordan soaring above two defenders, ball extended in his right hand and legs split, accentuates the Amranys’ ability to create art that seems to defy gravity.
“More and more sports teams realized,” Omri said, “that the art we do has a significant, unique power to it.”
White bronze, which the Amranys have used to create nearly 50 sculptures, also distinguishes their work. White bronze’s use in the United States dates the 1870s, initially in monuments and gravestones.
“I’m kind of happy to work with this type of bronze again and again, even if it’s quite miserable material,” Omri said. “It’s harder and it’s stubborn, a combination of alloys that don’t like each other. So it kind of contradicts itself.”
Sunday unveiling of The Dirk is not unlike the unwrapping of a 24-foot-high Christmas present, except this one will be enjoyed, interpreted and posed next to for dozens of years, if not centuries.
In front of AAC, and its eventual replacement, and perhaps arena generations after that. Whether or not you come to think of The Dirk as the biggest and most badass statue ever, know that its creator has spent at least as many hours perfecting his craft as Nowitzki did his.
“I always debate myself, just as a philosopher always will ask the question,” Amrany said. “I will keep asking. We’re still asking ‘Did we do right by Michael Jordan?’ "
Is it even possible to do right as by Nowitzki as he has by Dallas? After Sunday, his next and biggest honor will be his induction next August into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Fans, though, will have to trek to Springfield, Mass. to see that Nowitzki exhibit. All they’ll have to do to see The Dirk in Dallas is drive down or walk along Nowitzki way.
Its creator naturally has his own interpretation of the final product.
“I think it’s pretty cool.”
