“Woooo! Get me another stein! I’m on a roll here!” Willie Cauley-Stein yelled as he easily downed what must have been his tenth beer of the evening. “Going to this authentic German restaurant was a great idea, Maxi!”
Maxi Kleber, who had been forced into wearing a pair of too-small lederhosen for the occasion of his new career-high, glared at his inebriated teammate. “This pseudo-European bar is far from an ‘authentic German restaurant’,” he said. “In fact, this caricature of German culture is a slap in the face to my heritage.” His eyes again went up to the garishly-lit neon sign above the bar which read “Der Drinkhaus”.
“Well, these deep-fried schnitzel bites sure taste authentic to me,” Dorian Finney-Smith commented from Maxi’s other side. “Yo Willie, when you wash out of the league, maybe you can go play in Germany and eat these things all the time!” Willie was too busy ogling the bosomy waitresses clad in scanty “Oktoberfest” outfits to respond to his teammate’s attack on his basketball ability.
“I am sure that I have never seen such a thing as ‘schnitzel bites’ in my home country,” Maxi said, quietly enough that he was barely heard by the celebrating assemblage of teammates.
“Dude, stop complaining, at least you get a restaurant,” chimed in Luka Doncic. “You know where the closest Slovenian restaurant is? Slovenia.”
“Yeah, and last time I had a good game, everybody took me to Taco Bell,” added J.J. Barea, who had oversized pretzels in each hand and whose face was smeared with mustard like a botched application of yellow lipstick. “I’m not even Mexican.”
“Don’t hate on Taco Bell,” Luka warned.
“Maxi! MAXI! Sing the German drinking songs for us!” Willie yelled, raising his twelfth stein of “authentic German lager” (really just Miller Lite) high in the air. “JA JA JA, ICH BIN DRINKING, ICH BIN DRINKING, JA JA JA, WUNDERBAR!!! WIIIIIR SIIIIND GEDRUNKENNNNNNNN RIGHT NOOOOOOOWWWW! Come on Maxi, sing with me! Let’s do a polka!”
“Willie, German culture isn’t solely based around being drunk. In fact, obnoxious levels of public intoxication are a distinctly American phenomenon,” Maxi said.
Willie wasn’t listening. He had climbed up on the table and was doing a crude impression of a “polka” dance while continuing to sing in garbled German. “ALLES GUT WHEN WE ARE GEDRINKING DAS BIIIIIER! JA JA JA BIER, JA JA JA BIER!”
“I’m outta here,” Maxi said, slipping the painfully-tight suspenders of his lederhosen off him and slapping down some money to pay for his one glass of beer and basket of french fries. “You guys are totally welcome to keep partying though.”
“Wait, you can’t leave, you didn’t get the surprise yet!” Dorian yelled. “The surprise! The surprise!”
Maxi’s interest was piqued. “The surprise?”
Suddenly, Dirk Nowitzki burst out from underneath the table, flipping it over and causing beer to shower everyone in the vicinity. Various fried appetizers were strewn on the floor. “GUTEN TAG MEIN FREUND MAXI!”
“Dirk? What’s going on?”
Dirk had gotten a traditional German chocolate cake from somewhere. On it, written in fancy script with pink frosting, was the number 26. The number of points that Maxi had scored against the Magic. “I am honored to call you a fellow German, my friend. I may be retired, but the strong legacy of German basketball in Dallas lives on through you!”
Maxi took a piece of the cake. It was delicious, just like his mother had used to make for his birthdays back home. Maybe getting dragged to Der Drinkhaus with his teammates. hadn’t been such a mistake after all.