NBA FINALS: HEAT vs MAVERICKS

http://www.pinoybasketballaddicts.net/2011/05/nba-finals-heat-mavericks.html

a repost from Pinoy Basketball Addicts

Forward Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks will face the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.

Back around the middle of March, it appeared the wheels were coming off for a pair of teams that had entered the year with championship hopes. In Miami, a home loss to Oklahoma City dropped the Heat to just 4-7 over their last 11 games, which included an embarrassing home loss to the Bulls after which coach Erik Spoelstra regrettably told reporters that players were crying in the locker room. In Dallas, the Mavericks had lost five of eight, all five losses coming against playoff teams.

The postseason was a month away, and bad signs were popping up in both cities. As Mavericks guard Jason Terry said, “The rhythm obviously isn't there right now.”

The rhythm is back, however, as both teams have made impressive postseason pushes into this year’s Finals. Dallas finished off the Thunder in just five games in the West, and the Heat matched that feat in the East, clinching their series with the Bulls in five games on Thursday. Dallas and Miami each enter the Finals having won 12 of 15 in the postseason.

Had either the Bulls or Thunder advanced out of their respective conferences, the stakes for these Finals wouldn’t seem quite so high—both are young teams that will have chances to get back to this stage for years to come. For the Heat and the Mavericks, there is a lot on the line:

Miami

One of the more interesting fluctuations in the NBA this year has been the expectations for the Heat in the wake of them bringing together LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. They entered the season with visions of topping Chicago’s 72-win 1995-96 season, and set the bar absurdly (and to some, obnoxiously) high when, during an introduction that felt more like a championship celebration, James counted out the number of rings the Heat might win—he suggested they might win eight.

But the Heat looked like a flop in the first month of the season, turned dominant in December, flopped again ... and so on. Every winning streak, it seemed, turned Miami into title contenders. Every loss exposed them as overrated.

Now, though, expectations for the Heat are back at a high. They have played at their best over the last month, and are looking at a series that can establish themselves as a championship team for years to come, a chance to validate the controversial decision James made last July to leave Cleveland for South Beach—one that came with extraordinary backlash from fans, the media and even Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, who guaranteed that Cleveland would win a championship before James.

At the time, though, James—as well as Bosh and Wade—claimed winning was the motivation for the move. And a championship remains the best way to truly wipe aside the negative reactions to what happened last July.

Dallas

The Mavericks are simply running out of time. Star power forward Dirk Nowitzki has carried them to this point, and one has to wonder, at age 32, just how many more performances like this he has left. Additionally, his supporting cast is almost universally nearing the end of the line—Jason Kidd is 38, while Shawn Marion, Peja Stojakovic and Jason Terry are all 33.

For both Nowitzki and the Mavericks, there is redemption at stake. This franchise has been to the Finals only once before, and that came in 2006—against Wade’s Heat. Dallas won the first two games, then dropped four straight to lose the series and wind up hung with an oft-repeated label: soft. The following year, the Mavericks won 67 games and earned the No. 1 seed, but were upset by Golden State in the first round. Before this year, they had lost five of their last six playoff series and, whether it is fair or not, Nowitzki has been handed the brunt of the Mavs’ reputation for softness.

In these Finals, though, all of that can change. Nowitzki and the franchise can wipe clear the memory of ’06 and eradicate the word “soft” as the go-to adjective for Mavericks basketball. Nowitzki seems to know it—he didn’t do much celebrating in the wake of the conference finals win. “I was already thinking about the Finals,” he said. “This is nice for a day, but we set our goals in October to win it all. We haven’t done it yet.”