It’s been nearly 20 years now since the Miami Heat beat the Dallas Mavericks in six games in the 2006 NBA Finals and captured their first title in franchise history.

Even after all this time, Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban still has sour grapes about how the series ended for his team and claimed that the championship series was “stolen” from Dallas.

“We hurt in 2006 after it was stolen from us, right?” Cuban said. “And I’ll take that to my grave that it was stolen from us.”

For a while, all signs pointed to the Mavericks — who were led by German big man Dirk Nowitzki at the time — coming out on top over the Heat in that championship series nearly two decades ago. After all, not only did Dallas win the first two games to get out to a 2-0 series lead, but it won Games 1 and 2 handily. The Mavericks beat the Heat by double digits in both contests.

But, Dallas then suffered a Finals collapse. The team dropped each of the last four games of the matchup and couldn’t contain guard Dwyane Wade as the series dragged on. Wade scored 36-plus points in Games 3, 4, 5 and 6 and ended up taking home Finals MVP honors.

Cuban’s belief that the 2006 NBA Finals was stolen from his Mavericks becomes clearer when looking at the free-throw disparity between Wade and everyone else. Wade attempted an unbelievable 97 shots from the charity stripe across six games, and that equates to 16-plus free throws per game.

For comparison, no player on the Mavericks attempted more than 55 free throws in the Finals series. Plus, the Heat ended the series with 207 free-throw attempts as a team compared to 155 for the Mavericks.

Cuban’s Mavericks reached the championship series much more recently in 2024 with guards Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving spearheading the team, but Dallas came up just short of a title once again and lost to the Boston Celtics in five games.

Maybe the Mavericks will get over the hump and win a championship in 2026. The team has plenty of star power headlined by Irving, big man Anthony Davis and great depth across the board. It might just have the personnel to contend in the West, even though Doncic is now a Los Angeles Laker.