So it will be the Miami Heat and the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals starting Tuesday night.
It’s not Boston-Los Angeles, but it is a lot better than Memphis-Atlanta.
And it will serve its purpose as creating enough drama and storylines over the course of a seven-game series to make for compelling viewing.
It is a rematch of the 2006 NBA Finals, when the Mavericks blew a 2-0 lead against the Heat and went on to lose the next four games and the league crown.
There’s not a lot of history between the two cities. They met in Super Bowl VI when the Cowboys crushed the Dolphins 24-3 in 1972.
Neither basketball franchise existed then. The Mavericks were founded in 1980, while the Heat came in the league in 1988.
The Mavericks were named after the television show “Maverick,” which starred James Garner, who was listed as a minority investor in the original ownership group.
The Miami franchise was nearly named after a television show as well. But in a fan vote, Miami Heat defeated Miami Vice.
This could have been J.R. vs. Crockett and Tubbs.
There is bad blood between the Mavericks’ maverick owner, Mark Cuban and Heat diva LeBron James. If this was the WWE — and more often than not the NBA reminds me of a pro wrestling production — it would be Cuban vs. LeBron.
It was Cuban — who pursued James and lost during the summer of “The Decision” — who, as a sore loser, declared on a Dallas radio show in September that James had orchestrated the largest public humiliation in the history of sports.
“LeBron has every right to go wherever and do whatever, whatever team he wants to,” Cuban said. “Going to the Heat was his choice, those guys working together. I don’t even have a problem with the three of them working together, as long as they follow all of the NBA rules, which I think they did.
“Where I think LeBron made a mistake, was in how he did it,” he said. “I don’t even have a problem that he had the TV show. But it turned out to be the largest public humiliation in the history of sports. He humiliated the organization, he humiliated the state of Ohio, the city of Cleveland. All of a sudden he became a bad guy, he lost a billion dollars in brand equity, give or take a couple bucks here or there. …
“I told his folks that I think he got bad advice. It’s not about ‘Can he move?’ He can move, he can play for any team. I think he picked the wrong team. There’s a team in Dallas that could have used him and that would have been better served, but it’s his choice. But the way he did it I thought was just a huge mistake.”
Sounds like a cage match to me.
Examiner columnist Thom Loverro is the co-host of “The Sports Fix” from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on ESPN980 and espn980.com. Contact him at [email protected].
