Supernatural resiliency carried the Phoenix Suns through misfortune and missteps for seven months, until at long last, superior depth and talent trumped all the pluckiness.
Dirk Nowitzki towered over the Suns, Josh Howard shot over them and Jason Terry rushed past them, and the Dallas Mavericks, in the sixth game of a fantastically entertaining Western Conference finals, finally eliminated them, with a 102-93 victory Saturday at US Airways Center.
The Mavericks open the NBA finals Thursday at home against the Miami Heat, which finished off the Detroit Pistons on Friday.
It is the first finals appearance for both franchises, the first time that has happened since Washington and Seattle met in 1971.
If their Game 7 decision over the San Antonio Spurs in the conference semifinals represented the Mavericks' greatest victory of the last decade, then Saturday's victory here represented their most significant -- a landmark in the ownership of Mark Cuban, the young coaching career of Avery Johnson and the rising stardom of Nowitzki.
After a shaky start, Nowitzki finished with 24 points. Howard scored 20, Jerry Stackhouse had 19, and Terry added 17. Dallas trailed for most of three quarters but seized control early in the fourth and never relented.
The Suns, who had staved off elimination four times in these playoffs, could not make another incredible comeback. Steve Nash had 19 points and nine assists but was contained for most of the second half. Boris Diaw, who became a star this spring, had 30 points.
After the final buzzer, Cuban skipped and shook a victorious fist. Then he embraced Nash, the point guard he let leave via free agency two summers ago. Nash then hugged Johnson, his former teammate.
And so ended one of the most compelling -- and logic-defying -- runs in recent NBA history. By all rights, the Suns never should have made it this far. They were playoff long shots when Amare Stoudemire went out with knee surgery and Joe Johnson defected to Atlanta last summer. When Phoenix made the playoffs anyway -- after also losing Stoudemire's stand-ins, Kurt Thomas and Brian Grant -- they were deemed no more than interlopers.
Then they survived seven-game trials against the Lakers and the Clippers, lost (and regained) guard Raja Bell, routed the Mavericks in Game 4 and had this series tied at 2-2. Rarely has one team so consistently throttled oddsmakers.
The valley air was thick with tension -- and 109-degree heat -- but the Suns seem to have been built for tension and heat. They had already faced elimination on four occasions in these playoffs and won all four of those games, by an average of 19 points.
The Mavericks fell behind by double digits in the first quarter and spent the rest of the night trying to regain their Game 5 mojo.
Nowitzki, who wrote his name into Mavericks history with 50 points in Game 5, looked more like the guy who scored 11 points in this building last week in Game 4. The Mavericks' guards were in foul trouble, their best shooters could not shoot and they only occasionally showed flashes of the defense -- and little of the grit -- that Avery Johnson had instilled.
Momentum began to seep toward the Dallas bench in the third quarter. The Suns lost Diaw and Tim Thomas to foul trouble (4 apiece), and Nowitzki started to find his rhythm. Terry made a couple shots, the Mavericks knocked the lead down to single digits, and the locals began to get antsy.
Nowitzki, after a 2-for-9 first half from the field, scored eight of the Mavericks' last 10 points of the third as they pulled to 66-62. The quarter ended with some controversy. Leandro Barbosa's layup off an inbounds pass was negated when the referees ruled that the shot clock had run out first because the ball nicked Stackhouse's leg before it reached Barbosa.
Cedric Ceballos, the former NBA swingman turned arena MC, tried to rally spirits before the fourth quarter began, bellowing into a microphone, "Do you believe?" three times. The crowd roared its answer in the affirmative, but it sounded like wishful thinking.
Dallas scored the first six points of the fourth quarter to complete a 12-0 run and take a 68-66 lead, its first since the opening seconds of the game.
The Mavericks played the opening minutes like a team desperate to close out the series. It was evident in all the worst ways. Dallas missed 15 of 21 shots in the first quarter, including eight in a row. Terry and Devin Harris were on the bench with two fouls each less than 8 minutes after tip-off. Marquis Daniels, a swingman, became the point guard, and it was clear Dallas was in trouble.
The Suns, paced by Diaw's 10 points, led by as many as 16 points in the first quarter. Nowitzki scored a point in the period and did not make his first field goal until the 9 minute 35 second mark of the second. He reached halftime with eight points. No Maverick cracked double digits in the half. Terry did not score until the third quarter.
Phoenix had a 51-39 halftime lead, but plenty of its own concerns. The Suns scored just two field goals in the final 6:13 of the half, both by Nash. Four Suns had three fouls -- Diaw, Barbosa, Bell and Thomas. They allowed Dallas to shoot nearly 50 percent in the second quarter and cut an 18-point lead to 10.
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