Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal (right) celebrate after winning Game Six of the NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks on Tuesday night. The Heat won 95-92 to clinch the championship. - REUTERS
DALLAS (Reuters):
THE LONG-SUFFERING Miami Heat completed a remarkable turnaround by beating the Dallas Mavericks 95-92 on Tuesday night to win the NBA Finals 4-2 and claim their first championship.
Finals MVP Dwyane Wade scored 36 points to lead the Heat, a team of veterans who recovered from a 0-2 deficit to sweep the next four games against a Dallas squad whose confidence evaporated further with each loss.
Udonis Haslem hit eight of 13 shots to add 17 points for the Heat, who won despite hitting just two of 18 from beyond the arc.
"We knew inside this team was built for the playoffs," Wade said of Miami's unremarkable 52-30 regular season record. "That's what makes it sweet because not at one moment did one of us not believe in each other."
MAVERICKS DOOMED
Dirk Nowitzki paced Dallas with 29 points and 15 rebounds but the Mavericks were doomed by shooting only 37 per cent from the floor and hitting just five of 22 from three-point range.
A 17-foot jump shot by Josh Howard with 42 seconds left in the game pulled the Mavericks to within a point at 91-90, but Wade hit four straight free throws to push the Heat lead to 95-90 with 17.7 seconds remaining.
Two free throws by Howard trimmed the lead to 95-92 before two missed free throws by Wade with 10.3 seconds remaining gave Dallas its last ray of hope.
But a potentially game-tying 27-footer by guard Jason Terry misfired, giving the Heat their first title and igniting a midcourt celebration.
The championship was Pat Riley's fifth as a coach but first since 1988.
"I would have traded them all for this one," said a tearful Riley, whose previous titles came with the Los Angeles Lakers. "It's not disrespectful to any of them that I won.
"But after 18 years, and chasing, you keep chasing it, you keep chasing it, you get tired. So this gives me a sense of absolute freedom from having to chase it, desperately chase it."
The 18-year-old Heat franchise has often had outstanding records during the regular season but fallen flat in the post-season either due to poor play or running into title-bound teams like the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls of the 1990s.
Dallas crushed Miami in the first two games of the Finals in Texas and it appeared the Heat were poised for a typical postseason collapse.
But they caught fire and gained confidence in Miami, winning all three games inspired by the stellar play of Wade who averaged 40 points.
"I think what changed is everybody was counting us out," said Heat centre Shaquille O'Neal, who scored nine points and had 12 rebounds in the series finale. "Certain people up here were planning parade routes.
"When we saw that - that they didn't give us the respect we deserved - we just wanted to take it one game at a time."
The Mavericks had no answer to Wade, who hit 10 of 18 shots and 16 of 21 from the free-throw line on Tuesday night.
"Some of that stuff, you just can't teach," Dallas coach Avery Johnson said of Wade's offence. "When a player is making those kind of plays it's really no tricky play.
"He's beating double teams, he's beating triple teams. There's no tricks there. It's a straight isolation play."
