Anatomy of a D Magazine Cover Shoot

By now you’ve likely seen the “Best of Big D” cover image of Dirk Nowitzki taken by Billy Surface. Billy took the photo just two days after the Mavs had won the NBA Championship. We got about 10 minutes alone with Dirk in a makeshift studio of sorts that Billy had set up on the court of the AAC. Dirk was as friendly as you’ve been led to believe he is, but he was a little punchy. I think he’d had about three hours of sleep over the previous two nights, owing to general giddiness and some world-class carousing with the Larry O’Brien trophy.

As Billy was clicking away, his strobe lights flashing, I tried to get a smile out of Dirk. “Hey,” I said, “you know this shot is for the cover, right? You gotta lay it all on the court for us, Dirk.”

In that beautiful German accent of his, he replied, “So this time I beat out the pork jowls for the cover? What did I do to deserve that?”

It was a funny line that requires some explanation. Back in December 2009, Zac put together an oral history of a decade of Dirk in Dallas. Dirk sat for an interview and a photograph, which, with some digital magic, we turned into a throwback trading card. I was proud of how the whole thing came together. But each year in December, we publish our selections of the best new restaurants that have opened that year. So the cover in December 2009 was a picture of Bolsa’s Kurobuta pork jowls. Delicious but not Dirk.

I was stunned that he remembered with such detail the dish that, in his mind, had superseded him to land on our cover. This clearly explains why Dirk had to run off the court after Game 6 and cry in the locker room before he could compose himself enough to accept the MVP award. His hard work had finally paid off. After all those extra hours in the gym, after all the summers spent working out with Holger Geschwindner, he’d finally proven himself the equal of those pork jowls.