King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Not a go-to guy? Nowitzki is the hero as the Mavericks stun the Spurs in a thrilling Game 7.
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May 23, 2006 | "Now, we haven't won the championship," Dallas Mavericks coach Avery Johnson said after his team stunned the San Antonio Spurs with a 119-111 overtime win in Game 7 Monday night. "But how about those Mavs?"
How about those Mavs? They won a Game 7 thriller on the road, something that had only been done 17 times in 94 tries in the history of the NBA. It would be 18 for 96 by the end of the evening as the Phoenix Suns throttled the Los Angeles Clippers 127-107 in the other Western Conference Game 7 in Phoenix.
And how about the Mavs doing it against their nemeses and in-state rivals, the Spurs, the defending champions and about the last team in the league you'd expect to join that select list of Game 7 home losers.
And how about the guy who almost single-handedly willed the Mavs to victory when it looked like they would let another huge playoff game slip away: Dirk Nowitzki.
The guy I keep saying I don't want on my team when the chips are down in the playoffs. Well, on Monday night, the chips were down. They were way down. They were so down it looked like up. They were subterranean. They were praying to a cobalt bomb, telling Jimmy Hoffa to shove over.
And Nowitzki, who was brilliant all night, finishing with 37 points on 11-of-20 shooting and 15-of-16 from the line, plus 15 rebounds, was the man.
The Spurs had slowly overcome a lead that at one point grew to 20 points. It was a fool's-gold lead, built on white-hot shooting, but it was still a 20-point lead.
San Antonio tied the game for the first time with 1:07 left in the fourth quarter and took its first lead with 32 seconds left when Manu Ginobili hit a three-pointer following a Nowitzki miss of his favorite shot, from the right elbow, with Bruce Bowen all over him.
With the Spurs outscoring them 26-17 in the fourth quarter and the crowd going crazy, it looked like the Mavs were on their way to another crushing playoff defeat.
That's when Nowitzki took over.
After a timeout, Nowitzki drove hard to the rim against Bowen, a fierce defender. He didn't settle for a contested jumper, as he had the previous trip down the floor. He didn't launch a crazy, brain-cramp shot in defiance of better options, as he had at the end of Game 6.
He put his head down and drove hard. He fought through Bowen, ignored a foul by Ginobili sweeping past and trying to block the shot from behind -- a boneheaded move that would leave Spurs coach Gregg Popovich shaking his head with a sad smile on his face in an already oft-repeated clip from the postgame press conference -- and dunked with 21 seconds left.
And one. A monster of a play. The play of the season so far. Nowitzki hit the free throw for 104-104 and the Spurs called timeout.
Next page: And then he topped it. Plus: Steve Kerr eats some words too. And: TNT, please fix the slow score bug