Dallas Mavericks 4, Miami Heat 2. Champions.

Go ahead and read that again, because a year ago half the league would’ve bet their house against it.

Remember last summer? The Heat threw themselves a coronation before they’d played a single game. Smoke machines, flashing lights, LeBron promising not one, not two, not three, not four — you know how the count went. They were going to be a dynasty by appointment. The rest of us were just supposed to show up and watch.

Funny thing about basketball. It doesn’t read press releases.

What Dallas just did is the kind of run you tell your kids about. They didn’t sneak into the Finals through a soft bracket. They went through Kobe’s defending-champion Lakers and swept them — swept the two-time champs like they were clearing the table. They handled a young, hungry Oklahoma City team that’s going to be a problem for the next decade. They beat Portland. And then they stared down the most hyped roster assembled in a generation and beat them four times in six.

You want to know who this title belongs to? Dirk Nowitzki, first and forever. For a decade this guy carried the “can’t win the big one” label like a backpack full of bricks — twelve straight 50-win seasons, longest active streak in the league, and nothing to show for it but heartbreak. The 2006 Finals collapse against this same Miami franchise. The 2007 first-round embarrassment as a 67-win No. 1 seed. People wrote him off as a great regular-season player who shrinks when it counts.

Those people should find a quiet corner and think about what they did.

Dirk played Game 4 with a torn tendon in his shooting hand and a 101-degree fever — and a couple of Heat players thought it was cute to fake a cough on camera about it. Bad idea. You don’t poke a man who’s been waiting thirteen years for this. He answered the only way that matters: he closed the series out. Finals MVP, and not a soul in the building could argue.

But here’s the part the highlight reels won’t fully capture — this was a team. Jason Kidd, ancient by NBA standards, running the show like he had a map nobody else could see. Jason Terry, who all but guaranteed they’d win and then backed it up with a Game 6 that JET will be dining out on forever. Tyson Chandler giving them a spine in the middle they’d never had. Shawn Marion, J.J. Barea darting through the lane like a man who lost his car keys in the paint, Peja knocking down the dagger threes. Rick Carlisle pushed every right button. Mark Cuban, for once, just sat back and let it happen.

And Miami? The talent was always there. But in the fourth quarters — the championship minutes, when the game gets quiet and heavy — the best player in the world kept disappearing. You could see it building. Anybody who’d watched enough basketball could feel which way the wind was blowing by Game 4. The Heat had the star power. Dallas had the closers.

I’m not going to pretend I called this in October. Nobody sane did. But once that series tipped off, the pattern was right there for anyone willing to look: the desperate veteran team that had been to the mountain and gotten thrown off, versus the supergroup still learning how to win when it’s hard.

Hunger beats hype. It almost always does, eventually.

Twelve straight 50-win seasons. Years of doubt. One ring that wipes the slate clean.

The Heat planned a party. The Mavs showed up and took the trophy home. Sometimes the league gets it exactly right.