Nearly 20 years have passed since the Miami Heat’s controversial 2006 NBA championship. An entire generation of people have moved on and accepted the Heat as champions. Unfortunately, that doesn’t include former Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. To this day, he still holds a grudge. But 2006 NBA Finals MVP, Dwyane Wade, believes it’s time for billionaire to come to terms with reality.
Advertisement
Cuban’s feelings about the 2006 NBA Finals have never been private. His anger stems from what he deems to be an unreasonable discrepancy between the Mavericks and the Heat in terms of fouls and free throws. Childish as it sounds, holding on to something that happened during the Obama administration, Cuban might actually have a case.
After the Mavericks took a 2-0 lead in the series, Wade’s free-throw numbers began to increase dramatically. The most glaring came in Game 5, where he shot 25 of them, coincidentally the same amount as the entire Mavs team.
In a recent interview on DLLS Mavericks, Cuban spoke about that Finals series and claimed he is never going to stop talking about it. “I’ll take that to my grave that it was stolen from us,” he said.
For the most part, Wade has remained quiet when it comes to the narratives surrounding his first NBA championship. However, he had enough and addressed Cuban’s comments directly. “Mark, stop saying that,” Wade said on Time Out. “We beat y’all. Y’all got us, we got y’all. It’s all love. Stop that bulls***.”
Wade claims that he put his bias side before making such a claim. The three-time NBA champion broke it down a bit further in case Cuban and others have a hard time understanding his point of view.
“You’re not about to tarnish the work that I put in as a young guy to do something that not a lot of young guys have done. It wasn’t rigged. We still had to play the game. Was I the only one attacking the basket every play? Probably. So I’m going to get whistles,” Wade said.
Throughout the first 19 games of the 2006 NBA playoffs, Wade averaged 9.3 free throw attempts per game. That number ballooned to 18.3 free throws in the final four games of the NBA Finals. Rather than pointing to the game being rigged, Wade claims it was simple calculus; his aggression was dialled to 11 and consequently the free throws followed.
Both parties have a point here. Cuban feels slighted by something that wasn’t in their control. Wade feels any implication of unfair play is a stain on his legacy. So, as these things go, nobody is really in the wrong. But as far as Cuban is concerned, at least, the Mavericks were able to get revenge in 2011. While it’s not enough, it has to suffice.
