Updated June 14, 2011 22:33:00 It's not often that 48 minutes of basketball had so much riding on it.
Yes, it was a potentially deciding Game Six of the NBA Finals. One could argue that it doesn't get bigger than that, and usually it doesn't.
But for two of the combatants out there, legacies were on the line.
Dirk Nowitzki had the chance to validate 13 years of toiling and begin to heal the long-lasting pain of an historic Finals defeat five years earlier.
But in the Heat corner, LeBron James was two wins away from shutting up the nay-sayers who questioned his killer instinct, his desire to win championships and his move to Miami to join Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, a decision derided by some of the greats of the game and scrutinised by every media agency and its dog (myself included).
And despite suffering through an injured finger before Game Two, a fever and the flu in Game Four and the weight of all those years of expectation and doubt, it was Nowitzki who walked away with true championship credentials.
The difference between the two superstars could not be more stark.
In a league full of superstars, enormous pay cheques and egos to match, Nowitzki has always been a man who lets his game do all the talking for him.
James on the other hand spent much of his first season in South Beach explaining away tweets, off-hand press conference remarks or the time he infamously bumped coach Erik Spoelstra's shoulder as he walked off the court during a time-out in Dallas in November.
Since he came into the league at age 18, straight out of high school, James has drawn comparison after comparison to Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest ever to play the game.
Jordan's former sidekick Scottie Pippen, in Chicago to watch the Heat eventually eliminate the Bulls from the second round of the Playoffs in May, even went as far to say that while MJ was the greatest scorer to ever play, James could be the greatest all-around talent.
But as anyone who watched basketball in the '90s remembers it was fourth quarters in which Jordan shined brightest, especially in do-or-die postseason games and under adversity.
One of his greatest performances ever came in the 1997 Finals when Jordan was barely able to get out of bed the day before Game Five but gingerly suited up against the Utah Jazz and dropped 38 points on them despite being nearly unable to run, before collapsing into Pippen's arms as Chicago won 90-88 to go 3-2 up in the series.
In this Finals series, Nowitzki was the one more reminiscent of His Airness, although after his own "Flu Game" in Game Four he was typically quick to play down the comparison.
"This is the Finals, you gotta leave it out there," he told reporters after posting 21 points on 6-of-19 shooting and 11 rebounds despite playing through fever and flu symptoms.
"Like I said earlier in the series, everyone is due. We've been playing at a high level for eight or nine months so everybody has a little something going on.
"But this is the Finals and you've gotta go out there and compete and try the best for your team so that's what I did.
"I never thought about MJ's performance - obviously I was way off looking at my line [in the box score]."
Indeed he did leave it all out there - across the gruelling 21-game postseason campaign, Nowitzki averaged 27.7 points per game (ppg), 8.2 rebounds per game (rpg), 2.5 assists per game (apg) and shot at an impressive 48.5 per cent from the floor and 46 per cent from downtown.
Those numbers are on par with his 2006 Playoffs tilt, where he played two more games but with five less years on his seven-foot, now nearly-33-year-old frame.
Since tasting Finals defeat in now infamous fashion - no team had ever come from 0-2 down in a best-of-seven series to win it all, like Miami did - Nowitzki and Dallas never got further than the second round of the Playoffs, but the big German stuck with it.
Nowitzki said winning on Miami's floor did not make it any sweeter, despite the way the Heat won in '06.
"Obviously that was one of my disappointing losses in my career, to lose the Finals series after being up 2-0, and it took so long just to get here I don't really know if it would have made a difference," he told reporters.
"The feeling of being in the best team in the world is unbelievable.
"If you're in this league for 13 years just battling, [making the] Playoffs for the last 10 years and always come up a little short, that's why this is extra special."
Demands for trades seem to happen every week in the NBA but Nowitzki put his head down and kept putting in long hours at the gym with long-time coach Holger Geschwinder rather than seeking to join a contender with extra All-Star help.
Since championship team-mate Jason Kidd is still chugging along at 38 after 17 seasons in the NBA and fellow Mavs Jason Terry (33), Caron Butler (31) and Shawn Marion (33) are on the wrong side of 30, this might have been Nowitzki's last shot at a ring.
But all Dirk needed was the opportunity and by all measures he took that chance with both hands and ran with it all the way to the finish.
His distinguished career (10 All-Star appearances, regular season (2006-07) and Finals (2011) MVP awards, 11 straight All-NBA team nods, fourth-highest total scorer all-time among active players) made him a virtual lock for the Hall of Fame before winning a championship.
However in a league where success is, like it or not, measured by whether or not a player has what it takes to win a ring, Nowitzki's 2011 title does more than add weight to his already superb resume - it silences the doubters and validates all the plaudits that came before it.
That same pressure to win a championship, to prove oneself as a legitimate legend of the game, was what drove James to turn down maximum dollars in Cleveland, Chicago and New York to team up with Wade and Bosh in Miami.
Whether or not you agree with the way James left the Cavaliers for South Beach after seven seasons in an effort to win that elusive ring, the question remains: what more does he need to get over the top?
Throughout the opening rounds James was the dominant force we have all come to expect as the Heat wiped out the exponentially tough Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago to advance to the Finals.
But the pressure appeared to get to James as the Heat drew closer to lifting the Larry O'Brien Trophy a second time, and the two-time MVP did not play up to the same standard against Dallas that he did in the Eastern Conference series against the Sixers (24.2ppg, 10.6rpg, 6.2apg), Celtics (28.0, 8.3, 3.6) and Bulls (25.8, 7.8, 6.6).
His Finals averages were a shadow of his physically dominant self, finishing with 17.8 points, 7.2 rebounds and 6.8 assists per night when his team needed the usually aggressive driving scorer to get to the free throw line.
James' shrinking violet act in the Finals drew plenty of attention as the series rolled on and while he shot efficiently and facilitated for his team-mates in Game Six, his late-game performances were weak compared to the desperation Nowitzki showed every time he had the ball in his hands.
But Wade refused to say that he or James "choked" under the pressure in both men's second Finals appearance.
"The word choked is overused in sports," he said.
"We lost ball games, we lost the Finals.
"We ran into a team this time that was obviously better than us. We give them credit and we take nothing away from that."
James answered the doubters post-game, but came off more defensive than explanatory.
"All the people that were rooting me on to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life they had before," he said.
"They have the same personal problems they had today.
"I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want with me and my family and be happy with that."
That may be true.
However the fact remains that the move to join forces in Miami took him to the brink of a championship but under the bright lights, or on the big stage or whatever cliche you chose to employ, James failed to turn up with the performances he has built a reputation on for the last eight years.
In the past with Cleveland that failure could easily be deflected onto his lack of a supporting cast, chemistry problems or the organisation's inability to surround him with title-calibre players.
But in 2011 he was playing with one of his best friends who also happens to be another one of the top five players in the game and the third member of the Big Three, Bosh, is also one of the NBA's elite.
While their bench was a little thin the Heat did have a solid roster including sharp-shooting guards Mario Chalmers, Mike Bibby and Eddie House as well as a decent rebounder in Joel Anthony, the energetic and Finals-experienced Udonis Haslem and the veteran presence of Juwan Howard.
In any case if James wants to go down in history as one of the greatest of all time, he's going to need that ring and probably multiple titles.
Unfortunately with a labour lock-out threatening to cut the 2011-12 season short as it did in 1998-99, James has nothing but time on his hands to figure out where and why it all went wrong.
Tags: sport, basketball, united-states
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