Heat over Mavs in 5 or maybe 6

[813knight]

isn't Dallas primarily a jump shooting team? I don't think that will work against the Miami defense

It'll work fine if you can maintain a 60% clip, but I don't think anyone has done that before in a series taking mostly jumpers. Dirk may have come close against OKC.

didn't work too well last night. those shots might drop in Dallas but Miami in 6 looks good right now. Dirk already making excuses making an injury public, never trust soft Europeans in a championship round

[Bruce Blingstein]

isn't Dallas primarily a jump shooting team? I don't think that will work against the Miami defense

It'll work fine if you can maintain a 60% clip, but I don't think anyone has done that before in a series taking mostly jumpers. Dirk may have come close against OKC.

didn't work too well last night. those shots might drop in Dallas but Miami in 6 looks good right now. Dirk already making excuses making an injury public, never trust soft Europeans in a championship round

Dirk played scared and terry scored 0 points in the 2nd half. 

not looking good for mavs. 

[Bruce Blingstein]

probably the best comeback i ever saw. 

imagine miami didnt get every call or if the mavs could hit the open shots they usually hit. 

[Bruce Blingstein]

how can wade scream at a ref for a call that wasnt a foul and jump in his face and not get a tach then carlisle complain about an offensive elbow lebron threw (called against dallas) and he gets a T.

refs want miami to win. 

mavs just need to play their offense.  they havent even started yet. 

[Bruce Blingstein]

Miami fans singing na na na hey hey hey goodbye with 8 mins left in a game hahahah.  lebron just as dumb punching wade in the chest when he hits a 3 like its a dagger. 

i bet same miami fans singing left early and are on Collins right now celebrating and dont know Dallas won and wont really care when they find out they did.  lol

lebron wanted nothing to do with the ball during the crunchtime. 

[Fold FB Invest in BB]

These 9:00 games are killing me. I crashed with the Heat up 76 - 71 in the 4th. Lets just call this one a learning exerience and move forward. Dallas is clearly over matched when the Heat put forth any sort of effort.

[smazza]

heat facing some adversity

[Bruce Blingstein]

These 9:00 games are killing me. I crashed with the Heat up 76 - 71 in the 4th. Lets just call this one a learning exerience and move forward. Dallas is clearly over matched when the Heat put forth any sort of effort.

have to disagree.  I think Heat absolutely have the 2 best players on the court.  I think they are a much more athletic floor especially when they get in the open court, but Dallas is the better team.  Way better half court offense (which most the game is played in). 

No one on Dallas, besides Marrion, is really playing well.  Miami has Wade and Lebron killing it, Bosh playing good and had a role player like Bibby go off and didnt get the W.  Has to be a huge mental blow. 

Since you missed it, turning point of the game with about 7 and a half mins left, marrion turns the ball over Lebron comes up court dishes to Chalmers who hits Wade right in the corner by the Mavs bench and he hits a nice 3, stand and holds the pose right in front of the Heat bench (not classy).  Then Prince James comes over and puches him in teh chest while they taunt the Mavs bench.  Then the Mavs basically take that and embarass the **** out of them with a 17-2 run to win the game.  Even if the Heat win the series that was great.  I think anyone who watched that game on an unbiased head wanted the mavs to win or pnch Leborn and Wade in the face after that.  And they did the first part. 

On another note gotta love Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, all game they talk about the phantom calls the Heat get.  These primadonnas cry on every call.  On Wades prayer half court running three he fell on the ground and put his hand to his eye like he was fouled. hahaha looks like Lebron is rubbing off on Wade.  So corny. 

[flsportsfan83]

Loss at home was a tough one, but it will wake up Miami. The series still ends in 6. I think Dallas takes Game 3 and Miami takes 4-6

[Bruce Blingstein]

article is so true.  talks about self satisfied heat, lebron crying for a call with 5 mins left that was obvious didnt happen, nauseating.  etc. 

I should be a writer. 

http://www.cbssports.com/#!/nba/story/15192684/heat-return-to-their-smug-ways-and-mavs-make-them-pay

MIAMI -- This was everything we love about the Miami Heat of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade. This was basketball played at some of the highest levels it can be played, two historically gifted players toying with a great opponent for most of 40 minutes, and doing it with such joy, such passion. Just watching it -- the running and dunking and shooting and defending -- I kept thinking: This is a privilege.

But then it became everything we loathe about the Heat of LeBron and Dwyane. This was premature celebration at a level we haven't seen since July, when James, Wade and impressionable Chris Bosh celebrated their signed contracts as if an NBA championship can be won with a pen. Just watching it Thursday night -- the preening and posing, then the choking and excuse-making -- I kept thinking: This is nauseating.

Ultimately, this was everything we have come to expect from these fascinating, infuriating Miami Heat: Hollywood as hell. **** good.

But a bit too full of themselves.

And now the NBA Finals are tied at one game each after one of the biggest comebacks-slash-meltdowns in postseason history. The Mavericks stunned the Heat 95-93, finishing Game 2 with a 22-5 flourish capped by Dirk Nowitzki's spinning layup with 3.6 seconds left.

Dirk Nowitzki is the anti-Heat -- a quiet, humble, mentally tough SOB. He played with a splint on the middle finger of his left hand, and for more than 45 minutes he didn't play well. But he scored Dallas' final nine points, seven in the last minute, four with his left hand. That game-winning layup? He created it, then finished it, with his left hand. It probably hurt, but Nowitzki had more important things to worry about than pain. He had a game to win.

Contrast that with the Heat, who forgot they had a game to win because, honestly, they thought they had the game won. They led 88-73 with 7:14 left, the crowd going bonkers, the Mavericks crumbling. Miami thought the game was over, and Miami wasn't alone. Nobody gets off easy here, not even me. I was the idiot on Twitter who saw that 88-73 score and wrote the following: "Someone on the Dallas bench, throw in the towel. This is about to get ugly."

Boy was I right.

Just not like I meant.

This got ugly, ugly in a way that can't happen to a team with as much talent as the Heat -- but ugly in a way that could happen only to a team as self-satisfied as the Heat. The shot that gave Miami that 88-73 lead with 7:14 left was a 3-pointer by Wade. The sequence was beautiful to watch, started by James as he roared into the lane, elevated, floated until Mario Chalmers cut to the rim. James hit him with a pass, which Chalmers one-timed to Wade in the corner, where he buried the shot.

In front of the Dallas bench.

LeBron, as only LeBron can do, walked over to Wade and celebrated as if they'd signed a contract. Or won an NBA title. He danced with Wade, danced and pounded his chest until Wade relented and danced back. They were smiling, gloating.

In front of the Dallas bench.

"Hitting shots, posing on us," Mavs center Tyson Chandler said, "it's upsetting. I think it angered a lot of us."

While Wade and James made a mess with their premature celebration, they were oblivious to Mavs guard Jason Terry standing behind them. Watching them. Thinking things he wouldn't share with the media afterward, but things -- angry things -- you and I can guess. Coming out of the timeout, Terry hit a shot. Then another. And another. A few minutes later he hit again, bringing the Mavs within 90-86 and laying the foundation for the magnificent nine-point finish erected by Nowitzki.

As for the reaction of James and Wade to that final Wade 3-pointer, Chandler said: "You see all the celebrations, and they're throwing towels, and you say ... 'Is the game over?'"

For Miami, it was. There were more than seven minutes to play, but the Heat scored just five more points. In those seven minutes, James and Wade -- after the taunting, the preening, the posing -- took seven shots from the floor and missed all seven. Wade missed three shots, including the last one, a game-winner if it went, a running 3-pointer at the buzzer that hit the glass and rim.

   

This isn't the first time LeBron James and Dwyane Wade have celebrated prematurely. (Getty Images)   

James missed four shots, including the most grotesque miss of the game. Miami led 88-77 with 5½ minutes left when James drove the lane for a layup at the rim -- and missed. Missed everything.

"He short-armed it," Nowitzki said.

While the action went the other way, James turned to a referee and asked for a foul, hacking one arm with the other to show what (hadn't) happened to him. It was cowardly, is what it was. James blew the shot. It happens. Then he blamed it on a foul that didn't happen.

The fiction continued after the game when James was asked about that celebration in front of Dallas' bench at the 7:14 mark.

"It was no celebration at all," James said.

No, really. That's what he said. And then he said, "I was excited about the fact [Wade] hit a big shot and we went up 15. We knew we had seven minutes to go still. As far as 'celebrations,' that word has been used with us all year."

For good reason, LeBron. The celebration in July was inappropriate, irritating a nation of NBA fans. The celebration with 7:14 left in Game 2 was insulting, firing up a team of Dallas Mavericks.

Afterward James and Wade bickered with the media over the definition of "celebration," giving more thought to a stupid word than to the havoc it wrought.

"A celebration is confetti," Wade said. "A celebration is champagne bottles."

A celebration can happen in many ways. So can a meltdown. On Thursday night, the Miami Heat offered examples of both.