Video: Dirk Nowitzki is an excellent color commentator

The ability to turn a negative into a positive is the true mark of a winner. Dirk Nowitzki's ring finger might still be naked, but the way he's handling a stint on the shelf due to a sprained knee proves that he's a champion.

A suited and smiling Nowitzki donned some headphones and sat in on the Fox Sports Southwest broadcast of the third quarter of the Dallas Mavericks' 84-76 home loss to the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday night. The clip above, courtesy of the fine folks at DallasBasketball.com, features some of the German's choicest morsels, and BDL bossman emeritus J.E. Skeets has some more Dirk highlights at The Basketball Jones.

Our man Rob Mahoney has more from Dirk's headphone masterpiece at The Two Man Game:

Nowitzki joined Mark Followill, Bob Ortegel and Jeff "Skin" Wade for over half of the third quarter last night, and didn't disappoint. He took shots at Brian Cardinal and Jason Kidd for their age (the latter of which he said was 58 years old), gave a lengthy defense of his game-night sartorial choice, offered some intelligent commentary, exploded after Tyson Chandler slammed home a Kidd alley-oop, and yelled "Got 'em!" after Linas Kleiza was ejected. Followill described Dirk's on-air showing as an "A+ performance" during Nowitzki's sign-off, to which Dirk fittingly responded: "Yes, it has."

As a pretty harsh media critic, I'm inclined to dock Dirk for invoking Haddaway, but I'm also inclined to give him, like, a metric buttload of extra credit for making "TAKE THAT WITH YOU!" my new official thing to yell after a big dunk. Factor in the Tommy Heinsohn Homer Curve, carry the three, and yep, I'll go with the A+. Nicely done, Mr. Nowitzki.

Lenny Wilkens James Worthy Kareem Abdul Jabbar Nate Archibald Paul Arizin