Dallas won the NBA Finals game

Dallas Mavericks

With nobody on their side, the Dallas Mavericks finally proved us wrong. They won the NBA Finals on Sunday night, with a 105-95 conquest of the Miami Heat, destroying in an instant whatever doubts we still had about this team. Dallas earned this title, Miami didn't give it away, and the Mavericks are as deserving a champion as we've seen in this league. What a difference a half-decade makes.
It took months for us to find out what Dallas knew it had in them from the start. Nobody doubted Dallas' abilities as a fringe championship contender before the season, but they were just one in a group of strong Finals hopefuls from the Western Conference when the season started.

 

For good reason. Jason Terry(notes) was brilliant off the bench with 27 points on 16 shots. DeShawn Stevenson(notes) nailed three needed first half three-pointers. Jose Juan Barea was a riddle Miami just couldn't solve, as he got to the rim time and time again. Brian Cardinal(notes) was huge, coming through with his usual plus/minus (a game-best +18) heroics. Eight assists from 17-year vet and two-time Finals runner-up Jason Kidd(notes). Needed made shots from Ian Mahinmi(notes) (!). All over defense from Shawn Marion(notes). Championship ball.

 

 

 

And, late in the game with Miami threatening to possibly make yet another close game of it, there was Dirk Nowitzki(notes). Jumpers, spinning runners, scores and finishes. Nowitzki struggled with his shot in Game 6, missing 11 of his first 12 from the floor and finishing with 21 points on 27 shots with 11 rebounds. It wasn't his best, but it was enough, topping off a six-game run that won the 2006-07 NBA MVP the 2011 NBA Finals MVP.
Dirk couldn't have picked a better set-up, to exorcise those demons. Not only did he avenge Dallas' loss in the 2006 Finals (a series that Miami earned, and Dallas didn't give away, by driving hard, taking advantage of the way the games were called, and getting to the line), but he did it in Miami, against Miami, the same Miami. The not altogether sainted Miami.
In a year that has always been about Miami, Dallas made it their own. For the first time since LeBron James took his talents to South Beach, the focus is elsewhere, even in Miami's defeat. Not because Dallas is the better story, and not because Big Three ennui has finally set in.

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.

Mavs beat Heat at NBA the finals game 5

Dallas Maverics earning a 3-2 lead after winning Game 5 of the NBA Finals by a 112-103 score.
On top of that? The hope is that this is Dallas' version of a one-sided win, before we settle in for two more games. In a series where both teams have played each other to a near tie, overall, this was Dallas' nine-point answer to Miami's eight-point win in Game 1.The difference was defense, and the fact that Dallas just nailed a litany of tough, "ga'head and take it," shots. James' fourth quarter three-pointer clang was the wrong call, and you hated to see him happy to stay off the ball in the first half, but you can't pin this entirely on the deservedly-beleaguered star.

No, this was in Dallas' hands, as they lined up to spin in 13 three-pointers in 19 attempts (68 percent) and 52 percent of their two-point makes. Miami screwed up in its communication at times, leaving Mavs alone in delayed transition and failing to take away three-pointers (though they did close out properly and contest well) on several attempts, but you have to hand it to Dallas for rising to the challenge that comes with being favored, at home, while being asked to do what's expected against an opponent that has a way of destroying all reasonable expectations.

Dirk Nowitzki, free from obvious sniffles and biding his time in the offense as usual, dropped 29 points while hitting all 10 of his free throw attempts. And while he was rock, Mavs guards Jose Juan Barea andJason Terry(notes) were the deciding factors, putting Dallas over the top in a way that Miami just could not counter. Despite, upon first glance, smart and desperate close-out defense.