Those F#&%ing Heat

Tonight, the Mavs played the Miami Heat...and all those emotions came back to me. To see Dwayne Wade and Udonis Haslem on the Mavs' home court brings up so many terrible memories, and it makes me so stinkin' mad.

To this day, I'm not sure how the Heat won a single game from the Mavericks that series. Not the whole series...a single game. This was a Miami Heat team that was dead - D-E-A-D dead - almost three full games into the series. They were down 0-2, down double digits, and getting booed off the court by their own fans.

They came back and won that game. And the next one. And the next one. And the final one in Dallas.

It's something that I can't wrap my mind around...because that series was over. It was finished. The parade route was planned, and Miami's excuses were already there.

And then it all fell apart so quickly. Dallas lost its momentum in a matter of seconds, and it was never able to get it back. The two teams probably could've played a 50-game series, and Dallas might never have won a game.

And it's one of those things in sports that is impossible to explain. How one person can dominate for so long and then one moment can change everything. It happened to me when I was playing tennis with Tucker...I was beating him and I was about to take command of the match when I slammed the ball into the net.

I never recovered. I lost the next couple of games en route to losing the set. I was doing so well and playing so hard and then it all went away. That shot gets in your head, and every mistake after that is magnified. I ended the game by hitting the ball as far as I could...out of the court, across the street, and into a house.

So I understand why the Mavericks lost that series...and why, to this day, they never really recovered. But I also cannot believe that it happened. This town is absolutely desperate for a professional sports championship, and we were this close to finally getting one.

And imagine how things would've been different if they'd been able to hold on to that late lead in game three. I don't have any doubt that they would've won that series.

If they win the series, they probably don't win 67 games that next year. But they would've had the swagger of a defending champion, and the Miami loss wouldn't have been in their heads in the Golden State series. They very-well could've repeated that next year.

And even if they didn't, that championship would've saved Avery Johnson's job, and it would've saved the Mavericks from making the desperate Jason Kidd deal. Devin Harris would've continued to blossom on the Mavericks, and maybe the Josh Howard situation wouldn't have imploded so much.

And, as Dallas fans, our zest for a championship would've been satisfied. Maybe we wouldn't have been so hard on the Cowboys the past couple seasons if we were coming off an NBA title. Maybe we all wouldn't be so cynical when it comes to playoff losses and first-round exits.

Either way, I think sports in this town would've been better. But the NBA and the sports gods didn't smile on us that year. In fact, they did something that was cruel and unusual.

And, to this day, I still haven't gotten over it.