Nowitzki leads Mavs to brink of title

DALLAS – In the aftermath of their loss to the Miami Heat in the 2006 NBA Finals, the Dallas Maverics couldn’t stop making excuses. The Heat hadn’t so much won the title, Dallas decided, as it had been given to them, courtesy of poor officiating or the Mavs fumbling away the critical third game.


Eventually the whining so annoyed Dywane Wade the MVP of that series, that he went right back at Dallas, right back at Dirk Nowitzki's version of events, and blasted it all.

Nowitzki has said nothing during this series about those words, about that charge against him half a decade ago.
Whatever his failure then has been corrected. Dallas has taken control of these Finals, taken mighty Miami and its all-star crew to the brink, taken the veneer of inevitability and invincibility right off Lebron James and Co. because Nowitzki has turned into a leader for the ages.


Dallas beat Miami 112-103 here Thursday and the Mavericks are now up 3-2 heading into Sunday’s Game 6 back in Florida. And it wasn’t just Nowitzki’s game-high 29 points that made it so.

   Jason Terry's late 3-pointer all but ended any chance of a Miami Heat comeback Thursday.




This was the series on the line. The Mavs had hit a million shots and were losing anyway. They were in the process of holding LeBron to another quiet fourth quarter (just two points) and were about to blow it still. So after Nowitzki was done talking – and after Wade had increased Miami’s lead with a 3-pointer – Nowitzki demanded the ball, got to the lane, got fouled and, of course, knocked down his free throws.


He then stepped back and let his guys rise up. It was Jayson Terry, who Nowitzki had called out earlier in this series, draining two back-breaking 3-pointers. It was Shawn Marion previously benched in crunch time, producing a key steal. It was blue-collar Tyson Chandler delivering a huge block. It was Jason Kidd burying a 24-footer.


After his free throws, Nowitzki would never need to score again. Dallas would deliver a 17-4 knockout run, and the most clutch performer in these playoffs – hero of big shot after big shot – didn’t need to do all the scoring.


Nowitzki has the Mavericks exactly where he wants them – believing so fully in themselves that they’ve found a way to close out games that all of Miami’s heavy hitters can’t.

And yes, it’s his team. It’s unequivocally his Mavericks. There isn’t a debate here; no star-by-committee system. He’s taken a hold of this group the way he grabs the news conference microphone. Owner Mark Cuban has stopped talking to the media, seemingly lifting a mountain of pressure off his troops. Carlisle is comfortable deflecting praise onto the players and spends half his time crediting Dirk effusively.

After the game, Terry talked about one of his late, contested threes, and acknowledged he was so confident he probably would’ve taken it even if the shot clock wasn’t running down.