Charles Barkley Reminisces About 18-Year-Old Dirk Nowitzki Lighting up Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen

Back in our previous lives at HoopsTV.com, I was borderline obsessed with finding what I considered to be the Holy Grail of basketball footage: video of an 18-year old then-unknown-to-American basketball named Dirk Nowitzki lighting up an NBA all-star team on an exhibition tour in Europe back in 1997. And not just any NBA all-star team; this one featured Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Charles Barkley, among others.

Keep in mind that this was well over 10 years ago, so there was no YouTube and I was trying to work vague contacts in Germany to send me copies of the VHS tapes. It didn’t go well.

So you can imagine how much I loved seeing this video that we found last night of Barkley at a charity baseball game in Texas last summer telling the story of the Nowitzki “discovery” – and the 52 points he put on the U.S. – to a locker room that includes Dirk.

And for what it’s worth, here’s what looks to be 30 seconds from that “Dude, who the hell are you?” game:

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