Associated Press
DALLAS — Dwyane Wade knows in the NBA finals, collapses can carry over.
He was in the Dirk Nowitzki role five years ago, summoning a desperate charge to rescue a team that was down but refused to go out. A furious fourth-quarter rally saved the Heat from a 3-0 deficit and they never looked back, winning four straight to beat Dallas.
The finals hadn’t seen anything like that again until Thursday night, and this time Wade was on the wrong end of it. The Heat were almost halfway to another championship celebration when the game suddenly swung in the Mavericks’ favor.
Will the series, too?
“I understand once you don’t close a team down, they get confidence and life,” Wade said. “This is a big challenge for us. We’re going to have to live up to the challenge, the hole we dug for ourselves, and we’re going to see what we’re made of as a team.”
That means he, LeBron James and the rest of the Heat must prove they have the poise the 2006 Mavericks lacked.
“We made it a lot harder on ourselves,” Wade said. “We’re going to see what we’re made of as a team. Now we have three straight games on the road, but I wouldn’t want to be in this position with any other team.”
Game 3 is Sunday night in Dallas, giving the Heat two days to think about their seven bad minutes. They made only one field goal after taking a 15-point lead, allowing the Mavericks to pull out a 95-93 victory on Nowitzki’s layup with 3.6 seconds left.
Nowitzki, unaffected by a torn tendon in the middle finger of his left hand, scored the final nine Dallas points, including the tiebreaking basket using that hand.
After seizing the Mavs’ second chance, he warned that they can’t blow it.
“We’re going to approach the next one like it’s our last. You cannot get a split and get a huge emotional win in Game 2 and then go home and lose Game 3,” Nowitzki said.