The 2006 NBA Finals saw the Miami Heat comeback to win four straight games and the Dallas Mavericks plummet into an utter tailspin.
What a difference five months can make.
Fourteen games into a new NBA season, last year's finalists have found their fortunes reversed, Miami stalled in mediocrity and Dallas is the NBA's hottest team.
Before a two-game winning streak bumped their record to 6-8, the defending-champion Heat were mired in a stretch in which they lost six of seven. Dwayne Wade carried them to their last two victories, posting back-to-back 30-point games to increase his scoring average to 28.1 points per game.
Playing statistically the best basketball of his four-year NBA career, Wade is hardly to blame for the Heat's sub-.500 start. Instead, Miami's sluggish title defense can be attributed to the lack of production from Wade's supporting cast, particularly Gary Payton and Antoine Walker. Payton is averaging roughly 10 points per game less than his career average of 16.8 and has been held scoreless in three games thus far. Meanwhile, Walker is on pace for career lows in points, rebounds, and field-goal and free-throw percentages. Both key components to last year's championship drive, Payton and Walker lost their starting jobs before Miami's Nov. 24 game against Orlando.
Apart from underachieving, Wade's teammates have also been plagued by injuries. Starting point guard Jason Williams has not yet recovered from offseason surgery to repair a partially torn right patella tendon, keeping him out of nine games and limiting his minutes when active. James Posey, a key three-point threat off Pat Riley's bench, has missed the past five games with a calf injury.
Though both players are on the mend - Williams is easing his way back into Miami's starting lineup, and Posey is expected to return Thursday against the Detroit Pistons - the Heat will still be without their second-leading scorer, Shaquille O'Neal, for up to five more weeks after the Diesel had surgery on Nov. 19 to repair torn cartilage in his left knee. Still, O'Neal was hardly helping Miami even when he was healthy, letting Yao Ming score 34 points and grab 14 rebounds en route to a 94-72 Rockets win on Nov. 12.
Lacking contributions from key players, the Heat have tied their success to Wade's performance. In Miami's four biggest losses of the season, including a 42-point drubbing by Chicago on opening-night and a 24-point thrashing by the lowly New York Knicks, Wade scored below his season average. Interestingly, however, the Heat are 5-2 in games where he scores at least 30 points. Indeed, Wade's emergence as a superstar has kept the team afloat through its early-season struggles.
Meanwhile, the Dallas Mavericks, who ended last season by dropping four straight contests of the NBA Finals to Miami, opened the 2006-07 campaign at 0-4. In the 10 games that ensued, however, Dallas has managed to correct its early-season woes and rode a league-best 10-game winning streak into last night's contest against Toronto.
The reversal of the Mavericks' initial slump has coincided with the resurgence of the offensive pieces complementing power forward Dirk Nowitzki. While Nowitzki was averaging 22.5 points and 48.5 percent from the field in the first four games of the season, the rest of the potent Dallas offense was contained, with Maverick guards shooting 34 percent from the floor.
Throughout the winning streak, however, the guard play has improved, with Jason Terry averaging 17.1 points and 4.1 assists over the 10-game surge and Devin Harris contributing 11.7 points and 4.3 assists. Dallas has also received surprising production out of the center position, where, starter Erick Dampier and reserve DeSagana Diop have split time to deliver a combined 13.2 points, 14.6 rebounds and 3.2 blocks per game during the streak. Nowitzki, meanwhile, has not slowed his scoring pace as the Mavericks have won, either tying for or holding the team lead in points in each of the past 10 games.
Dallas' surge may also be attributed to a friendlier schedule, which allowed the Mavericks to feast on weak Eastern Conference opponents such as the Charlotte Bobcats and Washington Wizards, as well as bottom-level Western foes such as the Portland Trailblazers and Memphis Grizzlies. And as impressive as the Mavericks' Nov. 24 road victory over the San Antonio Spurs was, the Spurs were only one of three teams Dallas defeated during the streak that had a winning record. The Mavericks' upcoming competition is also rather tame, with four out of its next five opponents sitting under .500.
Though Dallas' win streak has erased its abysmal start, it has not eliminated its need to continue playing with a sense of urgency. If the playoffs started on Wednesday, 10-4 Dallas would be only the fifth seed in a stacked Western Conference and would not even have home-court advantage in a first-round series. Miami, playing in a far weaker East, would make the playoffs as the conference's sixth seed despite a record under .500. While the banged-up Heat can stay in the playoff picture riding Wade's hot hand, the Mavericks can ill-afford another losing streak.
