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If, on the morning of May 31, you placed $100 down on the Dallas Mavericks winning the NBA Finals, you'd be collecting a return of $1,800 from the Vegas bookmakers today.
The Mavericks were an 18-1 afterthought prior to the start of the NBA Finals, the red carpet over which the Miami Heat would step to accept their crown. The assumption was that a team comprised of mostly 30 year olds didn't have the flash or fury to overcome the superstar triumvirate assembled in Miami 10 months ago when LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade on South Beach.
But Sunday, as Wade and James flagged, the Mavericks clinched the first title in franchise history. The display was a dedication to teamwork, an example that the power of a collective body was more than the power of a single body. Below is a collection of pieces from around the country reflecting on Dallas' six-game victory.
Eddie Sefko, Dallas Morning News: The Mavericks clinched their first NBA title with victories over the Heat, Portland Trailblazers, Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder. In doing so, they were 4-0 with the chance to close out a series.
Brandon George, Dallas Morning News: Mark Cuban bought the Mavericks 11 years ago with the dream of bringing a championship to Dallas, until that point an historically unsuccessful franchise. Cuban built the Mavericks into a winner, one of the most consistent teams in the league. And, Sunday, finally delivered a championship. "There’s not a guy on our roster who hasn’t been doubted significantly for one reason or the other. And the fact that they were able to pull together, I mean, I’m just so [expletive] proud of them," Cuban told reporters.
John Hollinger, ESPN.com: Just as Cuban deserves credit for transforming the Mavericks into a winning franchise, coach Rick Carlisle deserves a hand for devising the formula to stop the Heat. Carlsisle, Hollinger writes, was pitch perfect in adjusting his team to beat the Heat.

Former WNBA player Margo Dydek has died after suffering a heart attack a week ago and being placed in a medically induced coma. She was 37.
Cathy Roberts, the operations manager for the Northside Wizards in the Queensland Basketball League, where Dydek was head coach, told The Associated Press that Dydek died early Friday.
The Poland-born Dydek, who was pregnant with her third child, suffered the heart attack on May 19 and collapsed at her home in Brisbane. Roberts said that Dydek was at an early stage in her pregnancy and that her unborn child had also died.
Dydek was the No. 1 pick in the 1998 WNBA draft by the Utah Starzz. She also played for San Antonio, Connecticut and Los Angeles.
The 7-foot-2 Dydek was once said to be the tallest active professional female basketball player in the world.
She held the record for most blocks in a WNBA career, with 877 in 323 games, and led the league in blocks nine times, from 1998 to 2003 and again from 2005-07.
On August 27, 2008, Dydek signed with the Los Angeles Sparks following time away from basketball due to the birth of her first son in April 2008.
An entry on Dydek's Facebook page says she was born on April 28, 1974, in Warsaw, Poland, to a 6-foot-7 father and a 6-3 mother. She had two sisters, and her elder sister Kashka used to play for the Colorado Explosion of the now defunct ABL, and in Poland.
Tina Thompson, a former teammate of Dydek's on the Sparks, said on the WNBA's Twitter feed: "My condolences to the family of Margo Dydek, may she rest in peace!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2011 NBA Finals Schedule

BEST OF SEVEN (2-3-2)

Date	Matchup	TV Network	Time
Tuesday, May 31	Mavs vs. Heat	ABC	9 ET
Thursday, June 2	Mavs vs. Heat	ABC	9 ET
Sunday, June 5	Heat vs. Mavs	ABC	8 ET
Tuesday, June 7	Heat vs. Mavs	ABC	9 ET
Thursday, June 9	Heat vs. Mavs*	ABC	9 ET
Sunday, June 12	Mavs vs. Heat*	ABC	8 ET
Tuesday, June 14	Mavs vs. Heat*	ABC	9 ET

Dirk Nowitzki wrapped his hands around the silver ball trophy that goes to the Western Conference champions and smiled. After five years, he and the Dallas Mavericks are kings of their conference again, earning another trip to the NBA finals.
Yet Nowitzki didn't flash the wide, toothy grin of someone relieved to have accomplished his goal. Because, he hasn't.
Unless the Mavs win the next round, too, and become NBA champions for the first time, their whole glorious postseason — and that silver trophy — won't mean as much. It's a lament heard by many superstars, but Nowitzki's indifference amid much of the frenzied celebration around him showed just how serious he is about it.
"I was already thinking about the finals," he said. "This is nice for a day, but we set our goals in October to win it all. We haven't done it yet."
Dallas capped its climb back to the NBA finals with a 100-96 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night that ended the Western finals in five games.
The young, up-and-coming Thunder made things tough on the older, now-or-possibly-never Mavericks as they had throughout the series. And, as he has throughout the postseason, Nowitzki made the plays that mattered most. His latest highlights: swishing a 3-pointer with 1:14 left that put Dallas ahead and making a pair of free throws with 13.3 seconds left to seal it.
"It feels good to finally go back," Nowitzki said. "This time, hopefully we can finish the job."
The Mavs' only other trip to the finals was in 2006. They were up 2-0, with a big, late lead in Game 3, but wound up losing to the Miami Heat in six games. They'd won only a single playoff series since until a tremendous run this postseason — going 12-3, with wins in 10 of the last 11 games, including a sweep of the two-time reigning champion Lakers.

He says his Los Angeles Lakers will rally from a 3-0 deficit against the Dallas Mavericks. It’s a rare comeback in North American sports, most notably accomplished by the 2004 Boston Red Sox against their rival New York Yankees and last season in the NHL, when the Philadelphia Flyers rallied to stun the Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference semifinals. As for the NBA, it’s never been done in 65 years of the league’s existence.
“I might be sick in the head or crazy or thrown off or something like that, but I still think we are going to win this series,” Bryant said. “I might be nuts. Win on Sunday. Go back home and see if they can win in L.A.”
When asked where that confidence comes from, the five-time NBA champion said: “I don’t know. I’m just nuts.”
Considering how the Lakers have played so far against the Mavericks, there are lots of reasons to call Bryant nuts and little reason for faith.The Lakers blew a 16-point second-half lead in Game 1 and were routed in Game 2. Their latest setback: The Lakers squandered an 85-78 lead with 5:08 remaining Friday and were outscored 32-20 in the fourth quarter.
Closing games has been a big problem for the Lakers in this series. In three contests, the Mavericks have outscored them 82-55 in the fourth quarter. Lakers center Andrew Bynum(notes) said it’s been a concern all season. Bryant had a harsher assessment of Friday’s meltdown.
“We [expletive] up,” Bryant said. “Stuff we went over [Friday] morning in the fourth quarter, [expletives] just didn’t do it. They didn’t make the [defensive] rotations they were supposed to. It’s as simple as that.”
Bynum, who had team-highs of 21 points and 10 rebounds, said: “We’re beating ourselves. … I don’t think it was their defense. It was more just us thinking for some reason we had to mismatch and that was the extent of the offense. …
“I’m not very stunned. I really thought we’d win tonight, at least.”
Lakers power forward Pau Gasol(notes) is a shadow of his All-Star self this postseason and talk of being soft has resurfaced. He’s “out of it” mentally and hasn’t been able to be “effective or comfortable out there,” but couldn’t explain why and says he needs to “snap out of it.” Time is running out.
He entered Game 3 averaged a disappointing 13.6 points and 7.8 rebounds in the postseason, which is 5.2 points and 2.4 rebounds below his regular-season averages. Gasol was poor again Friday, scoring 12 points on 5-of-13 shooting with eight rebounds in 40 minutes, including just three points in the fourth quarter. He also primarily guarded Mavericks forward Dirk Nowitzki(notes), who had 32 points and nine rebounds Friday.

 I don't suspect Pau Gasol would trade his championship rings for anything, but having won them is likely only going to make the the assault on his basketball reputation, almost surely forthcoming, perhaps as early as Sunday, that much worse.

As a team, the Lakers are very clearly reaching the end of an era. Of titles, of Phil Jackson. A summer of "Window for Kobe Bryant?" questions awaits. Except after the dust settles, the back-to-back title teams will be appropriately revered in Los Angeles. After winning 11 titles, losing a chance for a 12th doesn't exactly stain Jackson's legacy. Nor will an early exit from this playoffs stick to Bryant.

Gasol, though, is in for a world of hurt.

He arrived from Memphis with a rep of Cadillac skills and teddy bear toughness, but almost instantly elevated the Lakers into the league's elite. Despite numbers likely better than most people remember, no Laker absorbed more criticism for the loss to Boston in the 2008 Finals- and particularly the disaster that was Game 6- than Gasol. For the next two seasons Gasol fought against his image, playing incredibly high level basketball through a pair of title runs, outplaying Dwight Howard in '09 and coming up with key play after key play in last season's run. He was arguably the team's most consistent performer over that time.

This season, however, has been easily his most unreliable in purple and gold. After an MVP-caliber start, Gasol's play has deteriorated. Game to game, he became judged by the Black Swan/White Swan construct, essentially a daily referendum on his basketball manhood. With Gasol's struggles came problems for the Lakers. Now, following another bad playoff performance in Friday's Game 3 loss to the Mavericks, another in a string of substandard games dating back to Game 1 of the Hornets series, does all the good work he did to for his reputation go out the window?

“You tell me. Can it?," Gasol asked in the locker room. "Should it? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

He's right. He also may not get a vote.

Watching Gasol through the postseason has gone well past frustrating and into uncomfortable. To see someone so skilled play so poorly for such a sustained period is hard. Gasol is a thoughtful man, with a great deal of pride in his craft who has lost trust in his own game at a critical moment, and, just like everyone else, can't explain why.

"Obviously there’s some tension inside of me. I guess it’s—you can see it. It’s tangible," he said. “Obviously when you’re not playing as well as you can, it’s frustrating. So you get frustrated at certain times, and you’ve just got to try to be more decisive out there, and when you finish a couple plays, and when you’re successful in a few plays, then you keep getting that confidence and that tension goes away. But if you don’t, then it seems like it keeps building up a little bit.”

DALLAS — Kobe Bryant knows the deal. His Los Angeles Lakers are down 0-3 to the Dallas Mavericks and none of the 98 NBA teams facing that deficit have ever come back to win a series.
Yet Bryant also knows his team has won the last two championships, and reached the finals three straight years. And that his soon-to-be-retired coach has won a record 11 championships and has never been swept in his 20 years on the sideline.
Bryant also realizes how close his team is to leading this series 2-1. They blew a 16-point lead in the opener, losing only in the final seconds, and on Friday night they fell apart down the stretch again on the way to a 98-92 loss.
So, with all that in mind, he made this declaration following the Game 3 defeat: "I think we're still going to win the series."
Confidence, eh? Well, he also prefaced that line by laughing and saying, "I might be sick in the head or crazy."
The Lakers have mostly themselves to blame for being in this predicament. Leading by seven with 5:05 left, and having controlled the game throughout the second half, they got sloppy on defense. They gave Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry and Peja Stojakovic wide open shots, and that turned things around in a hurry.
A 20-7 closing run jump-started by 3s from Nowitzki and Stojakovic put the Mavericks on the verge of not only winning this series, but pulling off a sweep. Dallas can move to the Western Conference finals for the first time since 2006 with a victory at home on Sunday.
"We're not good enough to relax or take the pedal off the metal," Nowitzki said. "You don't want to ever give a champion life, so hopefully we can have the same effort and the same crowd and a great game on Sunday."

The Mavericks scored 32 points in the fourth quarter, the most by either team in any period this series. Bryant said the Lakers helped by making "some of the dumbest defensive mistakes I've seen us make all year."

Chris Paul would apparently hit anyone if he's playing against them in basketball, even his mother.
The Hornets star had an awesome performance in Game 4 against the Lakers, recording a triple-double and scoring 14 points in the fourth quarter. The all-star guard battled Kobe throughout the entire game and after it was all over, TNT's Cheryl Miller asked Paul what it was like to get physical with the five-time champion.
"He would do me the same way. It's all in fun, but it's our livelihood," he said. "I don't care if my mother was on the court. I'd hit her, too."
Paul scored scored 27 points and as Avinash Kunnath of SB Nation pointed out, he had just as many rebounds as Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol combined.

The Spurs, top-seed in the Western Conference, trailed by three points at half-time but inspired by Argentine shooting guard Manu Ginobli who top scored with 17 points, they grabbed a one-point lead by the end of the third.
There was a late scare for the Spurs when Sam Young, who top scored for the Grizzlies with 17 points, made a three-point shot to bring Memphis within two points with less than 15 seconds remaining.
But San Antonio kept their cool and George Hill made sure of the win with four points with free throws.

All-Star Ginobli missed the opening game of the series through injury but his return was crucial with him contributing seven rebounds and four assists while Richard Jefferson, Tim Duncan and Hill all scored 16 points each.
The Thunder comfortably took a 2-0 lead in their series against the Denver Nuggets with Kevin Durant scoring 23 points and Russell Westbrook scoring 21 in the 106-89 win.
The Thunder took charge from the outset and had a 26-point lead early in the second quarter as they secured their second win before the series moves to Denver Saturday for Game Three.
Although Denver, with Ty Lawson making 20 points, reduced the deficit to 10 during the fourth quarter, the outcome was never in doubt.
The Los Angeles Lakers were playing the New Orleans Hornets later Wednesday - trailing 1-0 in the series.