Mark Jackson, a former NBA All-Star now announcing for ABC, said it best Sunday night: “Great players, like death and taxes— eventually, they’re gonna get you.”

Well, in this year’s edition of the NBA Finals, the “great” players appeared to be Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, and Dirk Nowitzki, not LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, and the result was an NBA Championship for the Dallas Mavericks, by way of a 105-95 victory over the Miami Heat in game 6 of the 2011 NBA Finals.

It was the first championship in franchise history for the Mavericks, who have two future hall of fame players in 7-foot tall sharpshooting center Dirk Nowitzki, and point guard Jason Kidd, #3 all time in assists, and #1 all time in made three-pointers.

The two great players have come agonizingly close to NBA titles in the past, and this year’s breakthrough serves as the crowning achievement for Kidd’s career as an innovational distributor of the basketball, and Nowitzki’s career as the most feared mid and long-range jump shooting center in NBA history.

This was destined to be an intriguing Finals matchup from the outset.

The Mavericks are definitely a throwback to the old-school: They share the basketball, shoot the basketball well, keep the smack talk to an unlikely minimum (especially for an NBA team), and heed the wisdom of head coach Rick Carlisle, one of a handful of coaches in NBA history to have won a championship both as a coach and as a player.

The Heat, on the other hand, pegged by many as villains of the NBA from the start of the season, are explosive athletes who like to be heard, enjoy showboating some, employ intimidation tactics, and often appear to be lost offensively, whether they are indeed listening to head coach Eric Spoelstra and his staff or not. 

This culture clash of personalities and playing styles made for nothing less than offensive fireworks in this series.

Heat point guard Dwyane Wade and wing LeBron James, NBA superstars in their own right, did not disappoint with high-flying jams and slashes to the basket, while Nowitzki chose to stay grounded in the scoring department most nights— until the 4th quarter, that is, when he would go unconscious, hitting contested fall away jumpers not even Larry Bird or Pistol Pete Maravich could top in degree of difficulty or accuracy.

Clearly the Heat’s major downfall in this series was not lack of athleticism or talent as, all-in-all, they have more of both than the Mavericks, but a lack of direction instead.

The Mavs had their game plan down to a tee: Play hard-nosed defense (which is not their forte), get enough scoring from 6th man Jason Terry and other talented reserves, contain James and Wade within reason, and give the ball to Nowitzki in the 4th quarter while getting out of the way.

The Heat, on the contrary, were a victim of their own three-headed monster in James, Wade, and Bosh: At times, all three players tried to be “the man,” and when this didn’t work, something surprising happened; all three of them became too unselfish and just passed the ball around, and the Heat’s supporting cast followed their lead.

All the interesting asides in this series are too numerous to detail, but the most compelling one was 6’0 (so he claims— more like 5’10) Dallas guard J.J. Barea, who often scored and distributed at will in the paint among the trees like a flea in a forest; it was simply amazing to see.

It is also interesting and very fitting that James logged a respectable 21 points in game 6 as did Nowitzki, with Nowiztki hitting all the timely shots in the 4th quarter, and James doing very little in the 4th  quarter; that’s a microcosm of the series, in a nutshell.

Wade finished with 17 points, Bosh with 19, and Terry finished with 27 in a heroic effort, all but cementing his unofficial title as best 6th man in the NBA.

In fact, he would be the focal point and the star player on lesser teams.

And as the Mavericks prevailed, more than a few people were left with the impression that Miami Heat = hot air at its best, regardless of their limitless talents, as they recalled a symbolic moment before game 5 where Wade and James were seen imitating the slow-moving Nowitzki, who had tweaked an ankle back in game 4, but was eventually ok.  

Ironically, it was the Heat who limped off the floor after game 6 instead, and if LeBron James plans to conduct any future personal press conferences before a season begins, it should not be to make a spectacle of his departure from his hometown team to another: It should be to explain to hometown fans in Miami how he’ll play well enough to become the NBA champion he desires to be, as he is now 0-2 in the NBA Finals.