Friendly Fire

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Sooner or later it always happens: The Phoenix Suns run a pick-and-roll against the Dallas Mavericks, leaving Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki to face off at the top of the key. They have been there countless times before, Nowitzki in his awkward defensive crouch, his right arm extended as if a lion tamer's chair, his mouth guard protruding. Nash is in front of him, waiting for the help defense to clear out, for his teammates to space themselves, until it is just the two of them near the three-point line: the two-time MVP and this season's favorite, the two best players on the two best teams in the NBA, two men whose lives diverged but remain intertwined. This time they are playing in front of 18,422 at US Airways Center in Phoenix, but the setting could be anywhere. A YMCA in Dallas. The Western Conference finals. Nash's backyard.

Nash feints to the right. Nowitzki stutters backward, hoping to contain. He knows all of Nash's tricks--the runner, the floater, the step back, the one-hand-extended layup, even the seldom-used hook--but that doesn't make him any better at stopping them. The Mavs usually switch on the pick-and-roll, which means that the 7-foot Nowitzki must try to contain the 6'3" Nash many times in any given game. It is an uncomfortable situation for Nowitzki, who is neither quick nor exceptionally agile; he's like a defensive tackle trying to stop a wide receiver in the open field. Regardless, the fans relish the matchup, letting out a murmur of appreciation.

They are an unlikely pair of stars, these two. Who would have thought 10 years ago that a pair of skinny foreign finesse players, one a pass-first point guard and the other a three-point-shooting giant, would evolve into perennial MVP front-runners? "Might have made for a good movie," says Dallas assistant coach Del Harris, "but no one would think it was realistic." Despite their success, however, neither man is a global celebrity on a par with Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James or even Carmelo Anthony, and neither has even been voted an All-Star starter. There are many reasons why, from their nationalities to their styles of play ("As you might have noticed," Nash says, "we're not big dunkers"), but the most relevant one is that neither man wants to be a worldwide celebrity, in contrast to James, who says he aspires to be "a global brand" and "the richest man in the world." Says Harris, who has known Nash and Nowitzki since they entered the league, "They're just regular guys who happen to be very good at what they do."

Perhaps, then, this is the year of the Regular Guy. In a season that was supposed to be defined by Dwyane, LeBron and Carmelo, the NBA playoffs instead begin with the focus on a pair of old friends who refer to each other as "the grumpy German" and "the little runt." To understand how this came to be, one must know how the duo evolved, not only as players, but as leaders and as friends.

Few people know Nash and Nowitzki better than Al Whitley, the equipment manager for the Mavericks. Whitley grew up five minutes away from Nash in Victoria, B.C., and the two played on the same high school basketball team. When Nash was a Maverick, Whitley frequently visited Dallas, where he hit it off with owner Mark Cuban. He was offered a job with the franchise in 2001 and now travels with the team and is close to Nowitzki.

In trying to properly render the personality of his childhood friend, Whitley tells the story of a Nash-led bar crawl in 2003. With training camp only a couple of weeks away, Nash went out to lunch in Dallas with Whitley and another buddy. It was still the off-season, so the guys began badgering Nash to have a beer. Nash was reluctant to alter his preseason training routine but agreed on two conditions: that they drink only one beer per bar and that they run between bars. "So we finish our beer and then take off jogging," Whitley recalls. "Only Steve immediately sprints way ahead of us. By the time we got to the next bar, he was finished with his beer and telling us the name of the next bar." And so it continued, through the McKinney area of Dallas, from Taco Diner to TABC to The Quarter, Nash leading and his friends straggling behind. All the while, startled passersby wondered if their team's star had an unconventional new workout regimen. After running close to six miles, Whitley and his buddy were gassed. They stumbled up to the final bar, which happened to have an outdoor pool, and walked in. Unable to spot their friend, they looked out back, where they found Nash doing the backstroke. "If Dirk had been there," says Whitley, "he would have thought it was the greatest thing in the world."

Nowitzki was there plenty. During Nash and Nowitzki's first couple of years together in Dallas (both players arrived in 1998, Nash in a trade with the Suns and first-round pick Nowitzki in a prearranged draft deal with the Milwaukee Bucks), their de facto home base was Nash's condo, which was conveniently located only 100 yards or so from a bar named The Loon. Back then it was the kind of joint that served beer only in cans ("How awesome is that?" says Nash), and the duo could settle in for a burger and some Miller Lites in anonymity. "It was almost like we were in college," says Nash.

But Nash never sat still for long. "To him," says Whitley, "everything is a competition." So there were pool games at night and epic tennis matches during the day. (Nowitzki is very good at both tennis and Ping-Pong.) Then there were times when Nash organized an impromptu "footie match"--at his place. So there they were, a couple of professional athletes and their friends, romping around an unfurnished Dallas flat, gleefully booting a soccer ball off walls and windows.

For Nowitzki, Nash's friendship was a safe haven of sorts. When he first came to the Mavericks, Nowitzki was painfully shy, a 20-year-old rookie with a bad bowl cut who spoke barely any English and knew little about American culture. He and Nash bonded instantly--over their outsider status, their lukewarm receptions (both were booed during that first season) and their shared love of practice. At first Nowitzki was, as Whitley says, "like Steve's shadow, the guy sitting in the back of the bar watching all the wild Canadians." But the more time Nowitzki spent with the wild Canadians, the more their easygoing nature rubbed off on him. He handed out nicknames (Little S--- was a popular one), played his guitar and boasted of his athletic prowess. "He always says that if he stepped up against a major league pitcher, if he had 10 swings he could hit one out," says Whitley. He waits a beat and adds, "He's never picked up a bat." The rub with Nowitzki is that he's usually joking. "He's Mister Fake Negative," says Nash. "He complains about everything, but he's always putting you on." Adds Harris, "He is, in the best sense of the word, a total clown."