TNT Sports
"Game 3 was big"
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Published 21/06/2006 at 23:46 GMT+1
Dirk Nowitzki knows exactly when the Dallas Mavericks' championship season began to unravel. After easily winning the first two games of the NBA Finals, the Mavericks held a double-digit lead with five minutes to go in the third game but the Miami Heat battled back to win 98-96.
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A chink in the Dallas armour was exploited and while the Mavericks began to doubt themselves, Miami suddenly realized they could beat the Mavericks.
"Game Three was big," Nowitzki said after the Heat clinched the series four-games-to-two following a 95-92 victory on Tuesday night at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.
"I mean, we were up 10, we had the game under control with a couple of minutes left. And if we win that, the series is probably pretty much over.
"Maybe we were starting to celebrate too early. I don't know what happened. We didn't execute and we didn't finish the game.
"That was a tough loss and that really changed the whole momentum of the series."
Nowitzki is the Mavericks' only true top performer yet the 7-foot veteran from Germany was at times brilliant in the series and at other times non-existent.
MISSED SHOTS
He scored 29 points and had 15 rebounds but scored only two points in the fourth quarter and missed all four of his shots.
"I had a couple of looks there, two of three that I should make," he said. "Obviously, once I drove they really collapsed in the lane and I had to kick it out.
"But what can I say? It's a tough loss."
The Mavericks picked a bad time to have their only four-game losing streak of the season. And city officials did them no favors by announcing a tentative date for a victory parade when Dallas was up 2-0.
Miami players said their title, the first in their 18-year history, was a team effort despite the belief by some that the Heat are made up of the incomparable Dwyane Wade, 13-time All-Star Shaquille O'Neal and a supporting cast.
Wade was unstoppable in the series, averaging nearly 35 points in the six games.
"We did it together," said the most valuable player in the Finals. "Like Coach said, like we've all been saying, it's been 15 strong."
Swingman James Posey scored only six points in the final game but three of those were from a shot launched from behind the arc and put the Heat up by six in the closing minutes.
"It was a team effort," he said. "They weren't going to give it to us. It wasn't easy. We had to go get it."
Perhaps no one on the veteran-stocked team enjoyed the title more than Alonzo Mourning, a seven-time All-Star who was diagnosed with a life-threatening kidney ailment in 2000.
Mourning had a kidney transplant and returned to the court as a role player, not the dominant center he once was. He said the championship was especially sweet because "everybody counted us out."
"They had the crowd behind them and the momentum changes in games like this," he said. "We had to sustain their run with getting stops making defensive plays.
"I think collectively, everybody just dug a little bit deeper."
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