PHOENIX – This is the new NBA. Get yourself a mascot, some dancing girls, lots of booming speakers, fireworks and a team and you, too, can be in the NBA Finals.
The Miami Heat earned its first trip Friday with a victory over the Detroit Pistons, and the Dallas Mavericks sought to do the same Saturday night against the Phoenix Suns and thus make it the first NBA Finals in 35 years featuring two first-time teams.
The Mavericks wound up doing just that, rallying from a 12-point halftime deficit to a 102-93 victory behind Dirk Nowitzki’s 24 points and Josh Howard’s 20. They’ll take on Eastern Conference titlist Miami in the Finals starting Thursday night.
The Mavs’ 1-2 scorers also led them on the boards, Nowitzki grabbing 10 and Howard 15.
The Suns were led by Boris Diaw’s 30 poinbts and Steve Nash’s 19
“It’s great for the league,” Suns coach Mike D’Antoni said. “There’s more parity. The rules changes, the (luxury tax where) teams are not going to spend all this money to stack up. So it’s great, and I think it will (stay) that way. And hopefully we’ll be stronger than everybody.”
That once again seemed unlikely as the Suns came home trailing three games to two in the Western Conference finals with their goal to become the third team ever to play three seventh games in a playoffs. Only the Lakers in 1988 and Knicks in 1994 have done so.
But after they trailed 3-1 in the opening round against the Lakers, one has learned not to discount a Suns team that is filled with disbelievers.
“I never thought we were just going to dispatch Dallas easily,” Raja Bell said with typical Suns assurance in the face of defeat.
They simply refuse to believe what everyone keeps telling them-that they’re too small, too decimated by injuries and play too fast and loose.
“Every step it’s, “You can’t do it,”‘ D’Antoni said. “We know we can get to the conference finals twice. Until we win (the championship there will be doubters). But this is the way we’re going to go and we’re excited about it.”
And the home crowd was most excited as the Suns once again stuck their heads out and yelled, “We’re not done yet.” Instead of their aggressive, driving approach from Game 5, the Mavs showed up working on their perimeter jumpers, missing seven of their first eight shots, and 14 of their first 17. It gave the Suns the boost they needed after their own slow start.
With a short bank shot from Diaw for an 8-3 lead five minutes into the game, the Suns heated up. Diaw followed with a 15 footer, Shawn Marion got loose on the fast break after Diaw blocked Jerry Stackhouse and Tim Thomas hit a jumper. The Suns were off to a 29-14 edge after one quarter. They shot 61 percent to 28.6 for Dallas and dominated the backboards 15-6.
Yes, those Suns.
“We’ve risen to the challenge,” Nash said coming into Game 6. “If you sit down and think about all the obstacles in the way and all that we have overcome, maybe it looks like a tough challenge. But no one here feels like, “This is getting heavy.”‘ The Suns continued their barrage, Diaw anyway, in pushing their lead to 44-26 midway through the second quarter after Marion connected with a high arcing three that was picked up on NASA radar.
Diaw finished a magnificent first half with 20 points on 8-of-11 shooting and eight rebounds.
Nowitzki fell back to his old habit of falling away on his jumper and was only 2 of 9 for eight points in the first half, which ended with the Mavs trailing 51-39.
But with Diaw picking up a fourth foul on an offensive call, the Mavs began to find space inside the Suns’ feisty defense. Adrian Griffin, Howard and Jason Terry all scored on postup drives to cut the Mavs’ deficit to 53-43. Nowitzki again was the second-half savior as he was in Game 5. He scored 12 of the Mavs’ points in a 17-6 run to close the third quarter with the Suns ahead just 66-62.
As usual, the game also had a game within a game, especially with the Mavs accusing Shawn Marion, regarded as a sportsmanlike player, of an intentional elbow on Griffin in Game 5. The Mavs said they would appeal to the league for a suspension. Nothing was done, but it raised the ire of the Suns, who had been seething all series about Terry and Howard, whom they claimed intentionally stick out their feet to trip up players driving past them.
“My gosh, grow up!” D’Antoni said about the Mavs’ complaints.
The Suns, who never have won an NBA title, and the Mavs, never even in the finals, continued to both try.
At the end, it was the Mavericks whose effort paid off.
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