http://espn.go.com/nba/
June 13, 2011
Dirk Nowitzki(notes) (L) and Jason Kidd(notes) (R) of the Dallas Mavericks hold the MVP and Larry O'Brien Trophies after defeating the Miami Heat in Game Six of the 2011 NBA Finals, at the AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, Florida on June 12, 2011. (Photo by Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
MIAMI -- On the night he finally found vengeance, eternal validation and the highest measure of victory to wag in the face of anyone who had ever called him soft or mocked his cough, Dirk Nowitzki wasn't going to let the world see his tears.
So he left the scene of his greatest triumph before a single teammate or coach could grab him for a hug, faster than he's ever hurdled a scorer's table to bolt off the floor, and sneaked back to the visitors locker room.
To cry alone.
"I could already feel the tears coming," Nowitzki said in an AmericanAirlines Arena hallway, beaming now as he explained the mad dash at the final buzzer that superseded any urge he felt to dance on the court inside this house of old horrors ... or to find out how it feels to get a congratulatory man-hug from Dwyane Wade.
"I had to recover, bro."
The Dallas Mavericks had to drag Nowitzki back to the podium of champions Sunday night so he could hoist the two trophies of his dreams, because he didn't want anyone to see him like this, whether they were inside AmericaAirlines Arena or watching on TV. He admittedly "cried like a baby" back in 2008 upon clinching Germany's qualification for the Olympics for the first time in his career, but Nowitzki confessed that he was literally shaking with shock in the immediate aftermath of the Mavs' 105-95 dismantling of the Miami Heat to win the 2011 NBA Finals.
"We're world champions," Nowitzki eventually said once he made it to the interview room, with his Finals MVP trophy and a champagne bottle in tow.
"It sounds unbelievable."
It fittingly became a reality in the wildest way for a team pretty much no one pegged to be here when the playoffs started some two months ago, capping a surprise-filled NBA tournament with one last upset. Dallas' starless band of ringless vets that Nowitzki carried so much further than expected -- this motley crew that even Mavs president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson likes to refer to as "The Castoffs" -- wound up carrying its Hakeem Olajuwon for three quarters.
Jason Kidd. Tyson Chandler. Shawn Marion. DeShawn Stevenson and Brian Cardinal off the bench. Jason Terry, Dallas' only other 2006 survivor besides Nowitzki, supplied 27 clutch points as the sixth man, playing like one of the legends from back home in Seattle: Downtown Freddy Brown.
Truth be told, Ian Mahinmi's jumper somehow looked truer than Dirk's for much of this bizarre Game 6. Order was not restored until the fourth quarter, when Nowitzki finally recovered from his 1-for-12 shooting nightmare to drop 10 of his 21 points, responding to Terry's cries of "Remember '06" with five game-sealing buckets in the final 7:22 to zap what was left of Miami's spirit.
It was a farewell flurry that took Nowitzki's fourth-quarter total for the series to a heady 62 points ... matching the combined total Wade and LeBron James scored in the fourth. It was a clinching salvo that left even Nowitzki's famously stoic shot doctor with watery eyes when the ABC cameras found Holger Geschwinder in the stands.
"Tomorrow he gets a day off," Geschwindner said with a laugh once he got himself steady. "As promised."
Said Nowitzki: "It was weird. In the first half, I had so many good looks. I can't even explain it. I had some 3s top of the key. I had a wide-open 3 in the corner. I had some pull-ups. I had some one-legged fadeaways that I normally make.
"I just think this is a win [for] team basketball. This is a win for playing as a team on both ends of the floor, [for] sharing the ball, [for] passing the ball. ... I'm happy. We never looked at ourselves as soft. Not for one minute."
Dirk and his Mavs, truth be told, had more swagger than anyone knew. Keeping with a tradition that began in earnest before Game 4 of Dallas' second-round sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers, every Mavs player conspired to wear something black to work on Sunday, convinced that they'd soon do to Wade's Heat precisely what Miami did to Dallas in a Game 6 on the road five years prior.
"Goin' to a funeral" was the Mavs' inside joke.
Dallas was also privately smoldering, from Nowitzki on down, because of the video that circulated Friday showing Wade and James mocking Dirk's recent sinus infection. Maybe the Mavs made more out of the tape than they should have, since there have obviously been far more egregious offenses in NBA history, but their reaction clearly stemmed from the fact that Wade was involved. The same Wade whose relationship with Nowitzki has been frosty ever since he followed up Miami's 2006 championship by saying that Dallas lost because Dirk "wasn't the leader he's supposed to be in the closing moments."
The animus, as Mavs coach Rick Carlisle confirmed, was inherited and embraced by all of Nowitzki's teammates, no matter where they might have been five years ago.
"Our guys took it personally tonight," Carlisle said. "They were not going to be denied. Dirk and [Terry] have had to live for five years with what happened in 2006. And as of tonight those demons are officially destroyed."
Said Wade: "I think he's played awesome, man. Obviously Dirk, [what happened] five years ago, it burned in him. He learned from that experience. ... Now that he's a champion; it goes without saying [what it means] for his career."
The list of NBA MVPs without a championship, for starters, is down to six: Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Allen Iverson, Steve Nash, Derrick Rose ... and LeBron. Nowitzki was the unquestioned best player of the 2011 playoffs, surviving both a torn tendon in his left middle finger and that sinus infection plus high fever in this series, along with the oft-forgotten fact that the two guys forecast to be Dallas' most dynamic scorers not named Nowitzki -- Caron Butler and Roddy Beaubois -- didn't play at all in the postseason due to injuries.
Most of all, Dirk has banished the haunting memories of that night back in Dallas in '06 when Miami won on the Mavs' floor, after which he stayed at American Airlines Center well past 5 a.m. with the likes of athletic trainer Casey Smith, equipment manager Al Whitley and public-relations official Scott Tomlin, not wanting to believe that their blown 2-0 lead was all the way gone. To celebrate their revenge, Nowitzki and unmuzzled owner Mark Cuban led the Mavs, en masse, into the famed Liv nightclub at the Hotel Fontainebleau in Miami Beach after Sunday's retribution to seize and celebrate the moment with the sort of flash you associate with the vanquished Heat.
"The year he won MVP [in 2007]," Terry said, "doesn't even compare to what he did this year in the postseason."
Said Mavs legend Mark Aguirre, marveling earlier in the week about what Nowitzki has achieved in the go-to guy role he once occupied for this franchise: "Answer me this: If you switched Dirk with Wade or Dirk with LeBron, would the Mavs be in the Finals? No way."
Which might be the highest compliment you can pay him.
Kidd and Marion turned back the clock round after round with their D on Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and the Heat's superstar duo. Almost every single supporting-caster, from Barea to Peja Stojakovic, had a breakout moment or two in support of the highly underrated Chandler-led defense. Yet you still have to rewind to Olajuwon, with the 1994 Houston Rockets, to find the last one-star construction in the NBA that has proved to be so sturdy. So title-worthy.
With so many 30-somethings, Dallas obviously isn't built for the long term. Team sources have maintained for months that the Mavs, depending on how restrictive the next collective bargaining agreement is, still harbor hopes of getting in the free-agent mix for Dwight Howard, Chris Paul or Deron Williams in the summer of 2012, provided Cuban can figure out how to manufacture some salary-cap space for the first time in his ownership tenure.
For one glorious run, though, they had just enough with what Cuban and Nelson put around Dirk. Just enough to help Nowitzki, playing better than ever just one week removed from his 33rd birthday, to separate himself from two legendary power forwards who know only Finals heartache. In his seventh season of searching post-Steve Nash, Dirk has made the championship breakthrough that eluded Barkley and Malone, thanks to a string of performances that will linger far longer in the memory than his 9-for-27 shooting struggles in the season finale.
It's the "first time where the true alpha dog" on a championship team, as Nelson so colorfully described it, came from Europe. From a little town in Bavaria called Wurzburg.
"Dirk gets Executive of the Year, Coach of the Year, Man of the Year," Nelson said when asked if he ever dared to envision Nowitzki's seemingly ho-hum decision to re-sign in Dallas last summer could trump the historic union of Wade, James and Dallas native Chris Bosh on South Beach.
"He makes us all look smart."
"It feels amazing," Dirk said with eyes wide and dried, "to know that nobody can ever take this away from us."
LeBron just wasn’t LeBron throughout the NBA Finals
By Israel Gutierrez
igutierrez@MiamiHerald.com
Miami Herald
http://www.miamiherald.com/
June 13, 2011
MIAMI, FL - JUNE 12: LeBron James(notes) #6 of the Miami Heat reacts in front of Dirk Nowitzki(notes) #41 of the Dallas Mavericks in Game Six of the 2011 NBA Finals at American Airlines Arena on June 12, 2011 in Miami, Florida. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
It was over before it was over.
It was over when nerves got the best of this team that, by the end, appeared so unfamiliar it looked worse than when the season started.
It was over when the Mavericks had such a grip on this series that Erik Spoelstra was forced to change his starting lineup and then rely heavily on Eddie House off his bench.
It was over when Dirk Nowitzki missed 11 of his first 12 shots and the Mavericks were still leading by a bucket at halftime.
It was over when Jason Terry started backing up his words by lighting up LeBron James and the Heat.
There are a lot of things you can account for when dissecting this Heat six-game Finals loss to the Dallas Mavericks.
But the Heat lost this final game because of the unaccountable.
Nerves. Pressure. Burden.
There’s no way to prove it, of course. And it’s certainly not a way of shortchanging the Dallas Mavericks.
In fact, it’s because the Mavericks managed to avoid succumbing to any pressure in this series, playing as freely in the fourth quarter Sunday as they did in the final quarter of that Lakers sweep, that they managed three consecutive wins.
But the Mavericks aren’t the Heat when it comes to pressure. No one on the Mavericks is LeBron James.
And on Sunday, LeBron James wasn’t LeBron James.
He hadn’t been LeBron James since this series started.
There’s no way to dance around it this time. There’s no way to ignore six consecutive games of this. No way to excuse another passive performance (12 points after a red-hot nine-point start that included a pair of long jumpers).
If you needed to see how the pressure of being LeBron James had gotten to him, all you had to do was watch a few possessions of the last few minutes in the second quarter.
It was a close game at that point, with the tension in the building tangible.
At one point, James drove to within a couple feet of the paint, facing little resistance. And he didn’t even look at the basket. He passed it off for a baseline jumper to someone else. Didn’t matter who it was. It wasn’t LeBron James with a layup.
A few moments later, LeBron was at the line, his first trip there in the game.
Even though he had hit his first few jumpers, there was a strong feeling he’d miss the first free throw. He did. And the second. Not close misses. Misses that basically proved his hands weren’t steady, his mind wasn’t right.
That free-throw line issue wasn’t just LeBron’s, of course.
The Heat lost by 10 and missed 13 free throws. James missed three of his four attempts. The fact that he missed three of them isn’t even as bad as the fact that, once again, he got to the foul line just a few times in a game that was begging for him to get to the rim more often.
James was playing the same game he had been playing since the series started: standing around the perimeter, whipping passes side to side, hoping offensive execution would mask the fact that he wanted no part of taking over games.
Think about this for a second: How many times this year did you get upset because James stalled the offense by standing in front of his man and waiting until the final seconds of the shot clock to put on a move?
Regardless of what the result was, that was one of the most memorable and repetitive scenes we’ve seen in his first season in Miami. Now, how many times do you remember him doing that in this series?
Hard to remember even a couple.
Did he choose this series to suddenly perform within the offense at all times? If so, why?
No, these are the kind of inexplicable parts of LeBron James’ performance in this series that will haunt him, will haunt this franchise, will linger with him for the entirety of next season.
And under normal circumstances you could say he made up for it on the defensive end, like he had so many other times in these playoffs. But this time, James was as flat-footed on that end as he was lacking on the offensive end.
He left Jason Kidd open for a three-pointer. He fell asleep multiple times on Terry. This was Terry, the most efficient offensive player of the last three games in these Finals. And LeBron was, once again, caught up in the moment, looking the other way, rather than responding to it.
James wasn’t alone in this one. It just so happened that Wade had his first poor performance as well. He was a lousy 6 of 16 from the field, and he spent more time complaining to refs, committing bad turnovers or launching unanswered prayers from the perimeter than lifting his superstar teammate.
Another picture of a Finals series gone horribly wrong?
With 8:12 left and the Heat down 12 coming out of a timeout, it was Mario Chalmers who was in the face of Wade and LeBron and not the other way around.
The point guard that spent so much time being criticized for being inconsistent and having too much confidence in himself suddenly looked like the only steady force in this game.
And what of Chris Bosh? Well, he didn’t get enough of a chance to make a stronger impact in this game. Whose fault is that? Perhaps a coach who also crumbled under this unprecedented level of pressure.
“I was frustrated. ... I would’ve liked to get more involved,” Bosh said. “But I was just playing the game as it went. Looking back at it, I had it going a little bit. I was in a good place for the game.’’
This game, this series, was certainly an eye-opening experience for this team and its biggest star.
Perhaps the pressure was too much, after all. Perhaps it always has been for LeBron James, in particular.
“At the end of the day, guys try,” Bosh said, offering the best possible compliment he could of James’ play.
Maybe next season the Heat will take a cue from Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and stay quiet, maybe then relieving some of that pressure that was placed on the team.
Because this season ended at the exact opposite place that it started.
No. They. Didn’t.
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