Holger Geschwindner is a former basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 player, and is the mentor, coach and friend of the National Basketball Association

National Basketball Association

The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...

's (NBA) Dallas Mavericks

Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks are a professional basketball team based in Dallas, Texas. They are members of the Southwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association , and the reigning NBA champions, having defeated the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals.According to a 2011...

 power forward Dirk Nowitzki

Dirk Nowitzki

Dirk Werner Nowitzki is a German professional basketball player who plays for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association...

. Geschwindner first met Nowitzki when the future basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 star was 16 years old.

Holger is an official coach of the Dallas Mavericks

Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks are a professional basketball team based in Dallas, Texas. They are members of the Southwest Division of the Western Conference of the National Basketball Association , and the reigning NBA champions, having defeated the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals.According to a 2011...

 and runs a basketball academy in Würzburg that he calls "the Institute of Applied Nonsense." In 1995 Holger calculated the optimum angle of a jump shot to be 60 degrees.

Early life

A native of Würzburg

Würzburg

Würzburg is a city in the region of Franconia which lies in the northern tip of Bavaria, Germany. Located at the Main River, it is the capital of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. The regional dialect is Franconian....

, Geschwindner is alleged to have learned basketball as a young boy from an American soldier stationed in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

.