Shaq May Be Superman, but Wade Is Wonder Boy

By Mike Wise
Monday, June 19, 2006

MIAMI

This was Dirk Nowitzki's night of redemption, the night he made an incredible fallaway with 9.1 seconds left to give Dallas the lead and, surely, the game.

Until Dwyane Wade stole it.

This was the night Avery Johnson was going to be called a genius rather than the nutty professor, harboring his team members in a Fort Lauderdale hotel, making them room and bond together before their biggest game of the year.

Wade swiped that notion, too.

This was the night Dallas would emerge from its psychological funk in South Florida and go home needing one victory to claim the franchise's first championship.

But Wade could not let this emotionally wounded squad even have that pleasure.

"He's a winner," Pat Riley said simply, moments after Wade sank two clutch free throws with less than two seconds left and put the franchise Riley built one victory away from bedlam. "That's all you can say, he's just a winner."

And that rare young player who waits until the last possible moment to steal the competitive souls of his peers.

As Game 5s go, this one belongs next to Robert Horry quieting suburban Detroit with a three-point heave a year ago and Michael Jordan overcoming food poisoning and the Jazz in Utah in 1997. As Game 5s go, Dwyane Wade hitting two foul shots with 1.9 seconds left, willing Miami past Dallas in overtime, 101-100, goes down as one of the most pulsating Finals thrillers of all time.

I don't know if 43 points and some of those gravity-defying jumpers in the final minutes of regulation and overtime make you the greatest player in the game today. But I do know that no one else in pro basketball is playing this calm and serene and sensational in the Finals, making long shots with bodies draped all over him and his team creatively spent, in need of any semblance of offense.

One of the oft-repeated stories at the NBA Finals has Pat Riley challenging Wade to become the first star from that great 2003 draft class to capture a title, a feat LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Bosh won't pull off for a while.

But Riley never mentions the forgotten pick, the last player plucked in the first round, Josh Howard. And for most of four quarters and overtime, Josh Howard was as serene and confident in Game 5 as Wade was in willing the Heat back into this series.

Except like his team the past eight days here, he left the door ajar. He missed two free throws with 54 seconds left in overtime. Howard also called a timeout the Mavericks did not want to take with 1.9 seconds left in overtime, a timeout that he thought his coach wanted to jinx Wade on his second free throw attempt.

Not only did Wade make the second free throw after the commotion and give the Heat a one-point lead, but Dallas was unable to inbound the ball at halfcourt and set up a play in the final two seconds. Devin Harris's half-court heave was not close, and now Wade is much closer to a title than the other great player from that 2003 class still alive in the playoffs.

Everybody in the game will begin the Jordan comparisons anew, and that really should be left alone for another day. In four or five years, when Shaquille O'Neal is retired, and Wade becomes not only the scoring leader but the emotional leader of his team, then those comparisons might resonate. As long as he is playing alongside the strongest force in the game, we won't be able to fully appreciate what kind of otherworldly player Wade can be.

But he's not bad for 24, no? Think about the court sense you need to drive to the basket in the final seconds instead of settling for a jumper that has been working for you all game. Think about how mentally disciplined Wade was in those final seconds, knowing he could draw a foul and get to the line instead of trying to hit another prayer with Dallas defenders Velcroed to the No. 3 on his chest.

Players at 24 years old don't have that kind of recognition at that point in a swing game at the Finals. Most 30-something veterans don't that basketball IQ.

When Miami closes out Dallas on their home floor, history won't remember Wade for what he gave the Heat in Game 5 as much as what he seized from the Mavericks.

Their confidence. Their shot at putting away a club that won't die, a team not nearly as talented or deep as Dallas but blessed with a star who makes up for all their deficiencies.

The biggest concerns facing Dallas were whether their resolve in the Finals matched their considerable talent and depth, whether they could defend Wade and whether Avery Johnson's good sense would be lost in Miami along with his team's best shot at a championship.

The Mavericks and their animated coach were so close to silencing all their detractors last night, including this one. For most of the night they beat the Heat at their own, walk-it-up, kick-and-penetrate game.

Their young stars, Howard and Jason Terry, outperformed two of the brightest lights in pro basketball -- Wade and O'Neal -- for 40-plus minutes. Johnson had made better adjustments than Riley, a man who has been to nine NBA finals, in a game his team badly needed.

Insufferable as David Stern may have found it, Mark Cuban was almost one stupendous victory from rushing the floor in a Mavs jersey and bear-hugging his players and coach. The Mavericks were going to shut up the critics who questioned their heart and the people who questioned Johnson's decision to move them away from the temptations of South Beach to staid Fort Lauderdale.

In a matter of seconds, the Mavericks went from going home with a 3 games to 2 lead in this increasingly wild series to the brink of elimination, and I'm still not sure how it happened except to say that Wade is to blame. He is to blame for Dallas going down and the American Airlines Arena swept up in bedlam for its basketball team, for Cuban giving Stern a death stare at the end and Johnson moaning about the lack of contact on the last play. Wade is to blame for Dallas becoming unglued.

The Heat looked done late in the fourth quarter when Wade, with Harris draped all over him, dropped in a beautiful 16-footer from behind the foul line.

One minute, 40 seconds still remained but the guy who sapped Dallas's soul for more than a week had done it again. Wade and the Heat never had control of this game, never looked like the dominant team that had come back to knot the Mavericks in the NBA Finals at two games apiece.

But Wade and Miami found a way back into this game the way they found a way back into the series. They became the second team in league history to sweep the three games at home during the Finals.

They are in Dallas's head again, Wade crawling deep beneath their skin and into their psyche, so deep that Nowitzki had missed another huge free throw. When it was over and the building exploded in noise and music and streamers, the Mavericks looked as shaken as they were after they let a 13-point lead and a 3-0 series lead slip through their hands in the final seven minutes of Game 3.

Dwyane Wade, one game from meeting Riley's challenge, took that from Dallas too.