Why Nowitzki will not fly to Manila for Basketball World Cup final

 

BERLIN – German basketball great Dirk Nowitzki has said he will not be flying to Manila to watch Germany’s first men’s basketball World Cup final on Sunday, his agent has said.

German basketball great Dirk Nowitzki has decided against flying to Manila to watch Germany’s first men’s basketball World Cup final on Sunday, his agent has said.

Nowitzki – as MVP – helped Germany to third place in the 2002 edition, their best ever showing before this year. The 45-year-old was in the Philippines capital for the opening game of this year’s tournament before jetting to Okinawa in Japan for Germany’s first two group games.

But the retired Dallas Mavericks star will not attend Sunday’s final with Serbia, which Germany reached thanks to a breath-taking 113-111 win over the United States in Friday’s semi-final. German media have already labelled the clash the “thriller in Manila”.

Nowitzki can at least watch the final on free-to-air German television after ZDF decided to broadcast the final. Paywall streaming service Magenta has shown the tournament otherwise, making the semi-final free to watch.

But the fact the rest of the World Cup has been behind a paywall has upset Germany’s players and coach.

“Of course it’s a missed opportunity, if you ask me,” Moritz Wagner told reporters.
Germany coach Gordon Herbert, who is Canadian-Finnish, said of the tournament: “I don’t know if an opportunity was missed. It was shown in Canada, it was shown in Finland, it wasn’t shown (free to air) in Germany. You decide how to evaluate it.”