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umm,
HEAT-MAVS RIVALRY
A biting war of words between Heat-MavsThe Heat returns to Dallas tonight with a series of barbs involving Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki and Mark Cuban serving as a backdrop to the anticipated showdown.
BY ISRAEL GUTIERREZ
[email protected]
HOUSTON - It has been eight months since Dwyane Wade grabbed that rebound, looked at the clock and launched the basketball in the air at American Airlines Center to kick off the most significant celebration in Heat history.
The Heat returns to Dallas tonight for the first time since claiming its NBA le on June 20, 2006, in Game 6 against the Mavericks. And while this matchup doesn't quite have an NBA Finals feel, there is plenty of reason to anticipate the second and final regular-season meeting between the Heat and Mavs.
Since their first regular-season game Jan. 21, Wade -- who left Wednesday's game at Houston in a wheelchair after an injury to his left shoulder -- Mavs owner Mark Cuban and Dirk Nowitzki have renewed a public exchange of words that received a lot of attention and brought another element to the budding rivalry.
Before the season, Nowitzki said, and his teammates echoed, that the Mavericks handed the Heat the championship. Wade and his teammates took offense to the suggestion that they didn't earn the le, and Wade took his hardest shot at Nowitzki on Feb. 8, when he questioned Nowitzki's leadership, saying, ``Dirk says they gave us the championship last year, but he's the reason they lost the championship, because he wasn't the leader that he's supposed to be in the closing moments.''
Cuban responded with an entry on his blog, takings shots at Wade that included, ``What you know about Dirk's leadership skills is nonexistent. You don't have a clue. Your ability to evaluate leadership skills . . . well you obviously have an overinflated value of your own.''
SIMILAR REACTION
Heat coach Pat Riley was taking his leave of absence when the latest exchange occurred. But he said Wednesday before the Heat played the Rockets that the reaction from the Mavericks was ''typical,'' and similar to how he felt when the Lakers lost the NBA Finals to Boston in 1984.
''I think what was said by them last year was probably a genuine feel,'' Riley said. ``I remember when we choked away [a le] to the Boston Celtics back in 1984. We felt we did, we gave it away, in a seven-game series. We always felt we should've won that year, and we voiced it. We came back and won it the next year.
``I'm sure they're just voicing the fact that they feel like they should've won, that's it. Just let it go.''
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...s/16752551.htm
umm,
there is no rivalry. the heat were handed the championship by choking and the referees. the mavs are in a whole different league, let me explain...
------MAVS-----------------------------------------HEAT-------------------------
Exactly. I hate when people make it out to be one.
Mavs and Spurs, now that's a rivaly, but not Heat and Mavs.
if the Heat and the Mavs were to meet in the finals again... would that then qualify them as having a rivalry? its not a rivalry on the level of Mavs-Spurs... yet. but if jawing like this happens anymore, and if they meet in the finals, it could very well turn into a big rivalry. you can already tell the players dont like each other much. we will have to see. honestly, i hope it does. i hope that more heat players talk more , and that mavs players fire words back at them, because the league needs a TRUE rivalry that also consists of "hatred", like the Kings-Lakers, Bulls-Pistons, Lakers-Celtics, etc... of course nothing will compare to Lakers-Celtics just because of all the history those two teams have, but you get what i mean...
that said, i respect what Riley said very much.
The Heat and the Mavs are all es.
Well . Every team that feels they let it slipped through it's grasp would say this. Even Pat Riley. It's happened in every playoff year. But somehow Wade took offense to it.
We can all say it: Suns gave away the last two WCFs...
Pistons gave away 2005 le...
Now everyone can have a built in excuse.
Explain how the suns gave away the last two WCF's.
by getting their ass handed to them by teams that were unquestionably superior to the Suns.
Yeah, I was being sarcastic, dumbass. Explain how the Suns giving away the 2006 WCF is any different than Dirk saying they "gave away" the 2006 Finals, tough guy.
I can give you a brief example: they were up 7 in the 4th quarter of game 5 and then pussed it up and let Dirk go for 50 and the Mavs won the game. Head straight to Game 6 and you see the Suns up big in the first half and then choke it big time down the stretch to lose the series 4-2.
Mavs go up 2-0, then lose 4-2 and Dirk is justified in saying they "gave it away."
I was simply saying that Riley has given us all a built-in excuse...
JESUS!!!....
I think everybody takes everything tooo damn serious on these threads!!! Ppl cant have differing opinions?? Or what?? Man... ppl can't be left alone with their thots... Riley understood, everybody understood... whats the issue???
not only were the Mavs up 2-0, they were 5 minutes away from being up 3-0, and lost 3 games by 3 or less points while outplaying Miami for the majority of those games, and it was very uncharaterisic of them because they were a team that was known for being good at closing out close games, especially games like that. The Suns were not a good team at closing out close games, and they are not expected to win close, grind-out games, like the Mavericks were. When teams dont play defense, they cannot be expected to win grind-out games.
edit - i just looked up the play-by-play of that game 5, and saw that Phoenix actually never led by 7 in the 4th. in fact, the only time they led by 7 was in the third, and that happened with back-to-back 3's by Thomas, which quickly was answered by a 10-0 run by Dallas. BIG difference between losing a game by 1 point, and losing a game by 16 by getting owned in the 4th quarter. that isnt giving a game away. thats getting your ass kicked.
Last edited by stretch; 02-26-2007 at 08:16 PM.
Dirk saying "we gave away the le" isn't an excuse. He said they didnt play well enough in the last 4 games. An excuse would be "Wade got 60 freethrows per game for no reason and that's why we lost."
RonMexico, you say more absurd things here than anyone else. You twist everything. Dirk saying "we gave away the le" is not an excuse. Good god. Go back to school.
Yes it is. He was trying to discredit the fact that the Heat made an incredible comeback in 4 straight games.
thank you especially the miracle in game 3
Well, if we want to get on the subject of "refs giving teams games" then look at the play-by-play and realize that two straight techs on Bell and D'Antoni were bull ... and I did say they sucked that up... but definitely blew it in game 2 in Dallas and blew it in Game 6 at home when they had legit chances to win those games. At the least, it should have been a 7-game series and they choked away two games...
"Giving away a le" is throwing 2 games and losing 4-3 or something like that. It's not being up 2-0, and then losing 4 straight... that's called "choking."
I also call it "choking" when the Suns have the best record in the league and go down 3-0 to the Spurs in the WCF.
If Shaq came out and said they "gave" that 2004 le to the Pistons, you guys would rip him to shreds. D-Wade was just making it clear to Dirk that he can't be talking like that when Dirk didn't step up AT ALL for the last 4 games, especially in very important 4th quarters.
Where did I say anything about refs giving teams games??? you put that in quotation marks, yet i read my entire post and dont see such a quote. in fact, not once on this forum have i said that the refs game the Heat any games.
and in both Game 2 and Game 6, neither of those games went down to the wire, so i dont see how they choked or gave them away. they simply got beat. the Mavs simply made plays and dominated with execution, rebounding, and defense in the final 5 minutes of both of those games. its not even remotely similar to the situation against Miami, with games going down to the final shot. enough with the bull excuses.
That's not choking by any stretch of the imagination. That's called having your ass handed to you by a FAR superior team.
Kind of like losing 4 in a row on the biggest stage in basketball... know of a team that has done that recently?
You've taken the comments of my "buddies" and acted like they were my quotes, so I just reminded you of a few "refs gave it to them" comments.
Suns were in both of those games - and they weren't blown open until the final 2 minutes or so, when they started jacking up 3's... look it up, pal. Also, game 6 is inflated by Adrian Griffin's classless dunk with no time on the clock.
How did he discredit it, when he actually gave credit to them for making plays when they needed to, while the Mavs didnt?
No, he wasn't. Never said that - please don't put words in his mouth.
If he had said something like, "we really missed an opportunity there and didn't execute like the Heat did" then that's one thing.
It's another to say you "gave it away" because in sports talk, that's a slap in the face to the other team.
Otherwise, you guys wouldn't have ed when I (sarcastically) said the Suns "gave away" the WCF.
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