The heroes, goats and villains were identified easily as the Miami Heat celebrated its 2006 NBA championship early Wednesday and the Dallas Mavericks pondered how they let it all slip away.
After losing the first two games of the NBA Finals, the Heat won four straight, including its 95-92 victory in Game 6 Tuesday night.
Dwyane Wade was the obvious Most Valuable Player with a performance for the ages–36 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, four steals and three blocks. This after he averaged more than 40 points per game in the three dramatic triumphs in Miami.
“I’ve never had a player like this or have I been around a player who can absolutely beat five guys at times and then at the same time make great plays for [other] players,” Heat coach Pat Riley said. “The biggest play of the game was when he found James Posey (for a three-pointer and an 87-81 lead with 3 minutes 43 seconds left). He’s making his legacy in his third year.”
And Riley added to his with his fifth title, the first in 18 years. He insists he’s happier than ever.
He was his usual motivating self, with the Heat locker room revealingly filled throughout the playoffs with cards Riley gave each player to symbolize “15 strong” players together, each player contributing mementos as the playoffs continued.
“It was our time,” said Riley, who before Game 6 said he had packed just one set of clothes for the trip to Dallas. “I said it. I mean it.”
Riley added he will cherish this championship more than his other five (one as a player).
“Not disrespectful to any of them I won,” he said. “But after 18 years of chasing, you keep chasing, you get tired. So this gives me a sense of absolute freedom from having to chase it, desperately chase it. So it’s very special.”
That goes likewise for Shaquille O’Neal, who forced the breakup of the Los Angeles Lakers after Phil Jackson asked him to accept being that second option and support player. O’Neal said he wouldn’t do that for Kobe Bryant and was traded to Miami in 2004.
He would for Wade, however. O’Neal has delivered on his promise of a championship and has achieved personal redemption even if he had just nine points in the clincher and failed to score 20 points in any of the games.
Their surprising defeat left the Mavs fielding blame and explaining errors.
Dirk Nowitzki is drawing no more comparisons with Larry Bird after his basketless fourth quarter in Game 6. Josh Howard will be remembered as the player who revved up Wade, saying Wade couldn’t shoot. Wade threw the critique in Howard’s face with jumpers and taunts.
It was a historic collapse for Dallas, which was leading the series 2.9 games to none.
That’s when Wade took it away from them at the end of Game 3, and anyone who said they saw that coming is fooling themselves.
Because he did, Antoine Walker, Gary Payton and Jason Williams can call themselves winners for the first time in long careers.
“All these guys are deserving,” said Riley, who fought critics all season about the makeup of his roster. “To win a championship is difficult to do, to make sure they end their careers knowing that one day when they lay their head down on the pillow, they will never have to worry about this again. This one has been taken care of.”
Perhaps the most appropriate symbol of this Miami season and unlikely playoff run is Alonzo Mourning. His tortured story of basketball life and hardship, in some ways, was a metaphor for the Heat.
Mourning was once a major figure, the NBA personification of strength and hubris. He was struck down in 2000 with kidney disease, certainly not to be compared with the hardships others have endured, but beginning a journey that brought him to reveal the depths of his soul in the post-celebration calm.
Other than Wade, the Heat was a team with many players left to find a place in NBA society. They had been rejected and reclaimed, given up on and ignored. They believed they were better than everyone else did and just wanted another chance.
Mourning took advantage of this in Game 6, coming off the bench for eight points, six rebounds and five blocks in 14 minutes. His back-to-back rejections of Jason Terry and Howard as the Mavs clawed within two points with eight minutes left in Game 6 were critical. Mourning’s very presence on the team at that moment was an endorsement of Riley’s subtle superiority in this series.
He didn’t maneuver the pieces as quickly as Dallas counterpart Avery Johnson, but he inspired production with his faith in his abandoned fixtures.
This Heat journey mirrored, at least in basketball terms, the depths of despair and rejection, uncertainty and indecision. It provided inspiration and meaning.
“The darkest time,” Mourning said of his own personal battle, “was in 2000, Oct. 3. I was on such a high at that point because we had just come back from Sydney and we won [the Olympic] gold medal. I had just traveled back for the birth of my daughter. I was on top of the world.”
The kidney diagnosis was crushing, an apparent death sentence on top of the end for his basketball career. But he was fortunate that a cousin, who was with him Tuesday, was able to donate a kidney to him.
“I remember laying in the hospital and just feeling like a newborn baby, truly helpless. I was in a lot of pain,” Mourning recalled of his kidney operation. “I told somebody I will trade everything, all the money, all the material things, all the success in the world for my health.
“I know I’ve been given a second chance,” said Mourning, symbolic of the second chance for O’Neal, Riley and the Heat gang that most believed couldn’t shoot straight.
“I know it happened for a reason. The only way to share that particular situation is to continue to try to lift other people up, those who are going through any type of illness. You need words of encouragement, some hope. I needed that.”
Mourning hasn’t always been the most sympathetic figure. When he got the medical clearance to play again, he jumped teams and spoke out foolishly, though perhaps just in desperation as well as determination.
But he persevered.
“I got a call from Lance Armstrong,” Mourning remembered. “He was a huge, huge inspiration to me. I think about what he had to go through, literally being on his deathbed. I said to myself, `If he can do it, man, I can do it.’
“I know there are thousands of people who look at me the same way and I want to be here to provide them with the hope to overcome and not succumb. You need a little help and encouragement to get through. We’re human. Some people might not see me as human because of the things I do out there on the court. But I’m human. I laugh. I cry. I feel pain. I’m affected by some of the things you might write or say. And what drives me is my faith.
“I had a gentleman approach me at the hotel before the game who was dealing with some physical problems. I told him the key to recovering is keeping your mind right, because if you keep this positive and strong, your body is going to follow. I never gave up.
“I credit a lot of my recovery to that because so many people are quick to give up and say, `Why me?’ and not realizing there are so many people out there a whole lot worse than you. Regardless of how bad you have it, somebody else has it worse.”
The Miami Heat never quit, and it should give many others in the NBA hope.
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sasmith@tribune.com
