flipcritic
06-22-2006, 09:40 PM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/writers/phil_taylor/06/21/mavs.finals/index.html
As he watched them celebrate on his court, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban stood and applauded the Miami Heat, the newly crowned NBA champions. It had to grate at him, to see his team finish so close and yet so far from its first league title, but Cuban stood there, giving his conquerors their due. It was an admirable display of grace and maturity.
What a shame for the Mavericks that it came too late.
If Cuban and Mavs' coach Avery Johnson, the two leaders of the franchise, had been more like warriors than whiners during the Finals, the Mavs and their fans might not be in mourning today. There's no guarantee that things would have been different, of course; it may be that Dwyane Wade would have been too much for the Mavs in any event. But the woe-is-us tone that Cuban and Johnson set certainly didn't help matters. From Game 3 on, the Mavericks looked panicky and uptight, as if they were waiting for the next misfortune to befall them. That attitude came from the top.
So maybe the suspension of Jerry Stackhouse for Game 5 was unwarranted. So maybe the referees protected Wade as if he was a member of their family. What do you do about that if you're Cuban or Johnson? You let Darryl from Amarillo rant and rave about it on sports-talk radio and you keep your team's eyes on the prize. You certainly don't keep the issues alive by moaning and groaning about them to the media.
Even before the Heat wrapped up the title with a 95-92 victory in Game 6, there was no question which of the two teams had more of the look of a champion. Consider the way they each reacted when trouble arose. The Heat, having lost the first two games, didn't gripe or complain, they simply got on with it. Even trailing by double figures late in Game 3, they kept their composure and leaned on the remarkable Wade, who carried them through.
Once the Heat made it a competitive series again, the Mavericks, conversely, unraveled. Suddenly the world was against them, or so they believed. Johnson griped loud and long about Stackhouse's suspension and Cuban ranted about the officiating in general. He earned a $250,000 fine after he screamed at referee Joe DeRosa and stared down commissioner David Stern after Dallas' Game 5 loss, as if it was Stern who had missed free throws and failed to contain Wade down the stretch, instead of the Dallas players. The Heat must have smiled quietly, seeing that they had the Mavs distracted and panicked. Nearly everything Dallas did over the last three games of the series smacked of desperation, including Johnson's decision to move his team out of the Four Seasons hotel in Miami into less luxurious lodgings after they lost Game 4.
The Mavs learned the hard way that champions don't act that way. There is a reason that the old cliché about overcoming adversity is so popular -- because teams who win invariably do exactly that. Teams who lose don't overcome adversity, they complain about it and ultimately give into it. That's exactly what Dallas did.
We expected more from Johnson, the fiery little general whose intensity infused the Mavericks all season. The championship team he played on in San Antonio was a model of grace under pressure, and surely Johnson learned something from that experience. But in his first Finals as a coach, Johnson didn't give the Mavs the cool leadership that they needed once the tide turned against them. Even if the Stackhouse suspension for leveling Shaquille O'Neal was an overreaction by the league, Johnson shouldn't have spent so much time complaining about the unfairness of it all. It made his team seem like victims, and they acted that way for the rest of the series.
Cuban, unfortunately, behaved exactly as his past history suggested he would. It's part of his charm and one of his flaws that he acts like Joe Sixpack, the kind of fan who believes that the referees are either dishonest or incompetent, who thinks that the only blown calls are the ones that go against his club. So it was no surprise that he was so incensed over the foul disparity, and the questionable foul call that allowed Wade to make the winning free throws in Game 5. Cuban denied a Miami Herald columnist's eyewitness account of him screaming at Stern after that game, yelling that the game was "rigged," but it certainly sounds like the kind of thing he would do.
It's doubtful that Cuban will learn much of anything from the Mavs' defeat, but chances are that Johnson will be a wiser, cooler head because of this experience. The Mavericks lost this series long before Game 6. If they are smart, they will realize that one of the reasons they are not champions is because they never acted the part.
As he watched them celebrate on his court, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban stood and applauded the Miami Heat, the newly crowned NBA champions. It had to grate at him, to see his team finish so close and yet so far from its first league title, but Cuban stood there, giving his conquerors their due. It was an admirable display of grace and maturity.
What a shame for the Mavericks that it came too late.
If Cuban and Mavs' coach Avery Johnson, the two leaders of the franchise, had been more like warriors than whiners during the Finals, the Mavs and their fans might not be in mourning today. There's no guarantee that things would have been different, of course; it may be that Dwyane Wade would have been too much for the Mavs in any event. But the woe-is-us tone that Cuban and Johnson set certainly didn't help matters. From Game 3 on, the Mavericks looked panicky and uptight, as if they were waiting for the next misfortune to befall them. That attitude came from the top.
So maybe the suspension of Jerry Stackhouse for Game 5 was unwarranted. So maybe the referees protected Wade as if he was a member of their family. What do you do about that if you're Cuban or Johnson? You let Darryl from Amarillo rant and rave about it on sports-talk radio and you keep your team's eyes on the prize. You certainly don't keep the issues alive by moaning and groaning about them to the media.
Even before the Heat wrapped up the title with a 95-92 victory in Game 6, there was no question which of the two teams had more of the look of a champion. Consider the way they each reacted when trouble arose. The Heat, having lost the first two games, didn't gripe or complain, they simply got on with it. Even trailing by double figures late in Game 3, they kept their composure and leaned on the remarkable Wade, who carried them through.
Once the Heat made it a competitive series again, the Mavericks, conversely, unraveled. Suddenly the world was against them, or so they believed. Johnson griped loud and long about Stackhouse's suspension and Cuban ranted about the officiating in general. He earned a $250,000 fine after he screamed at referee Joe DeRosa and stared down commissioner David Stern after Dallas' Game 5 loss, as if it was Stern who had missed free throws and failed to contain Wade down the stretch, instead of the Dallas players. The Heat must have smiled quietly, seeing that they had the Mavs distracted and panicked. Nearly everything Dallas did over the last three games of the series smacked of desperation, including Johnson's decision to move his team out of the Four Seasons hotel in Miami into less luxurious lodgings after they lost Game 4.
The Mavs learned the hard way that champions don't act that way. There is a reason that the old cliché about overcoming adversity is so popular -- because teams who win invariably do exactly that. Teams who lose don't overcome adversity, they complain about it and ultimately give into it. That's exactly what Dallas did.
We expected more from Johnson, the fiery little general whose intensity infused the Mavericks all season. The championship team he played on in San Antonio was a model of grace under pressure, and surely Johnson learned something from that experience. But in his first Finals as a coach, Johnson didn't give the Mavs the cool leadership that they needed once the tide turned against them. Even if the Stackhouse suspension for leveling Shaquille O'Neal was an overreaction by the league, Johnson shouldn't have spent so much time complaining about the unfairness of it all. It made his team seem like victims, and they acted that way for the rest of the series.
Cuban, unfortunately, behaved exactly as his past history suggested he would. It's part of his charm and one of his flaws that he acts like Joe Sixpack, the kind of fan who believes that the referees are either dishonest or incompetent, who thinks that the only blown calls are the ones that go against his club. So it was no surprise that he was so incensed over the foul disparity, and the questionable foul call that allowed Wade to make the winning free throws in Game 5. Cuban denied a Miami Herald columnist's eyewitness account of him screaming at Stern after that game, yelling that the game was "rigged," but it certainly sounds like the kind of thing he would do.
It's doubtful that Cuban will learn much of anything from the Mavs' defeat, but chances are that Johnson will be a wiser, cooler head because of this experience. The Mavericks lost this series long before Game 6. If they are smart, they will realize that one of the reasons they are not champions is because they never acted the part.