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utorak, 31.05.2011.

Fresh possibilities ahead as Heat battle Mavs for NBA title

These NBA Finals are about beginnings. Or are they endings?
The kings are dead. At least, they're on the golf course, or however they spend their summer vacation. There are no Los Angeles Lakers, no Boston Celtics, no San Antonio Spurs. That takes care of 10 of the past 12 NBA champions.
In their place are new plotlines — but familiar enough faces of the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat. A sequel to 2006, when the Heat won in six games. But so much has changed. "Times are different," Dwyane Wade said. "Situations are different. Teams are different."
Here come the Heat, as many expected, some feared. Certainly not a finished product since the merger of James, Wade, Bosh, Inc., but finding itself this first spring together.
It has been an arduous road, never without pressure or scrutiny or malice from that part of the audience which loathed the way the South Beach trinity formed an alliance in the quest for domination.
Today Miami, tomorrow the world.
When ESPN handed James a dagger to stick into Cleveland last July, it was the beginning of something, but the Heat had only one ending in mind. They huddled together against all the storms that followed.
"We never turned our back on each other," Wade said. "Without that, we would have been done."
"It feels like a roller coaster, like the world is caving in on you. But you have to stay together," James said during the Eastern Conference duel with Chicago. "Nothing from our season has been easy at all. That is not in our vocabulary."
Here, too, come the Mavericks, driven by a relentless 7-footer whose title chances will one day run out. Dirk Nowitzki began a long time ago in Dallas and now looks around and sees grizzled faces from hither and yon, brought together to make a happy ending. A Jason Kidd, a Shawn Marion, a Tyson Chandler — nine players on the Mavericks roster have at least 10 years of NBA experience.
"We're trying to get somewhere where this franchise has never gotten," coach Rick Carlisle said. "So there's real resolve there."
"It's just a bunch of veterans," Nowitzki said, "with a lot of unique stories."
Miami and Dallas could hardly be called a new wave. Too many of the players have been around. Besides, for a true changing of the guard, we wait for the Chicago Bulls and Oklahoma City Thunder, who flexed their future in the conference finals, even as they kept blowing up in the fourth quarter.
Promised Oklahoma City forwaard Kevin Durant , "I know I'm far from where I want to be, and I think I'm moving in the right direction."
Promised Chicago point guard Derrick Rose , "If anything, this is going to make me hungry."
"Hopefully we won't have to continue to see him in the postseason," James said of Rose.
Wade: "We will.
James: "Yeah, we will."
But the present brings fresh possibilities, too.
What would validate James' decision faster than a championship?
"I wanted to team up with some guys that I understood would never die down in the moment," he said as the umpteenth explanation of his move. "I'm happy. In anyone's job, they always try to find some way they can do their job and be happy doing it."
Not only happy, but delivering clutch plays nightly, which has some witnesses making — trumpets, please — the Michael Jordan comparison. Scottie Pippen, for raise-the-eyebrow instance.
James might be a couple of titles short for that sort of thing, but he's working on it. This could be the beginning of true legend-building.
Meanwhile, what would be more satisfying for Nowitzki than ending both his personal quest for a title with Dallas' long search for the next step?
"There is no next step," Carlisle said, "until we've got a ring on our finger."
LeRingless James understands. "You dream about hoisting the trophy up, the title, seeing the confetti rain.
" If you don't have that vision, I don't know exactly what you're being part of this postseason for. I have that vision all the time, even when I'm awake or sleeping."
So here they are, two teams with their share of critics, on style usually more than substance.
"About a month left of the continued of hate," James said of his tempestuous journey. Maybe a championship will begin national acknowledgement of the wisdom of his intentions, or an increased tolerance for Mark Cuban's maverick Mavericks act.
But might it also be the end of basketball for awhile? Lockouts are all the rage, and the NBA faces one, too. The sport could soon be quiet and dark.
The Finals are alive enough, though.

31.05.2011. u 04:09 • 0 KomentaraPrint#

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