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Budweiser hooked Dirk Nowitzki up with 30,000 Bud Lights after his post-milestone shoutout

ben rohrbach
Senior writer
The Bud Light truck arrives with 30,000 cans for Dirk Nowitzki.
The Bud Light truck arrives with 30,000 cans for Dirk Nowitzki.

After he became the seventh player in NBA history to eclipse 30,000 points, Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki did something he doesn’t often do at his advanced age during the regular season: Drink beer.

The 38-year-old earned some suds, after all, but even more unusual for Dirk was his choice of brew:

That’s right. Nowitzki didn’t celebrate the milestone with a $90,000 bottle of champagne, as he did after winning the title in 2011, but with a Bud Light, which runs about a buck a beer in the Dallas area.

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For a Wurzburg native whose preference for German beers over their American competitors has been well established, that’s practically sacrilege. Much to the chagrin of the European Union, Budweiser appropriated its name from beer’s German roots, and while the company’s majority stakeholder is now headquartered in Belgium, that didn’t prevent them from rebranding as “America” this past summer. Most egregious, though, is that Bud Light just isn’t as good as thousands of German offerings.

“I usually drink some when I’m home (in Germany),” Nowitzki said in 2015. “During the season I actually don’t drink at all anymore. Just slows you down and as you get older, the recovery takes a long time.

“In the summer sometimes, I get it in. In Germany, we have a lot of local breweries. Every little village has their own beer. That’s the fun thing about it. You get to different spots and try their beers. We’ve had our own in Wurzburg and it’s pretty good.”

We can only assume Bud Light was the only option available after Dirk dropped his 30,000th point, and anything probably tasted like sweet success after he joined a club that previously only featured Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain and Julius Erving.

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The Bud shoutout wasn’t as self-serving as Peyton Manning’s post-Super Bowl plug, since we don’t think Dirk owns a distributorship, but that didn’t stop the company’s marketing wing from running with it. Anheuser-Busch delivered 30,000 Bud Lights to AmericanAirlines Arena with Nowitzki’s name on it.

We're not sure @budlight is the best gift for a German beer enthusiast, but @swish41 probably isn't going to complain about all that free brew.

A post shared by Ball Don't Lie (@yahooballdontlie) on Mar 10, 2017 at 10:01am PST

While 30,000 beers might sound like any man’s dream, finding someplace to store what amounts to 1,250 cases presents a problem, even for a guy who can afford his own warehouse. And that many Bud Lights is an even bigger predicament for a German who prefers Würzburger Hofbräu or a glass of wine.

Then again, nobody’s going to complain about free beer, so Dirk’s first year of retirement, whenever that may be, could get awfully interesting if he doesn’t share his overabundance of American light lager. It makes sense the Mavericks intend to provide one “Mavs Team Can” for each fan over 21 years old attending Friday’s home game against the Brooklyn Nets. Depending on how many of the capacity Dallas crowd of 19,600 get their hands on a free cold one, Nowitzki will only have something like 15,000-20,000 Bud Lights to consume this summer, which could put his 2017-18 season in jeopardy.

And there’s no telling how many he’ll need to wash down the new Dirkwurst at AmericanAirlines Arena:

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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!