The Finals

Wow.

And that is why you never turn off a sporting event before it’s over. Because no matter how dire the situation may seem, there is always a chance.

99 times out of 100, the Miami Heat win that game. Tonight, they didn’t. You can call it what you want – great defense by the Mavericks, poor shooting by the Heat, whatever. Because I’m highly biased and find myself rooting hard for a Dallas team for the first time in about 40 years (believe it or not, there was a time when I rooted for the Cowboys), I prefer to think of it as a rare combination of arrogance and hubris that doomed the Heat. The game was over, so they stopped playing their game.

There’s an old saying that a 7-game series doesn’t really begin until the home team loses a game. Well, we now have a series. And now, even though the series is tied and there is a ton of basketball yet to play, the Miami Heat find themselves with their backs against the wall. In the span of seven minutes, the story of this series changed from “Lebron’s Redemption” to “Miami can’t close the big games.” So now it becomes just that more difficult for the Heat to pull it off.

We’ll see. Right now, this series reminds me a lot of the 1984 series between the Celtics and the Lakers. To this day, I think the Lakers were the better team. They came this close (hold up thumb next to forefinger) to sweeping the series. And yet, they lost in 7, because the Celtics took advantage of every little mistake the Lakers made, and turned those mistakes into victories. The Mavericks strike me as a team like that. And that’s why I think they will win, even though they may not be the “best” team.