In a recent appearance on the DLLS Mavs podcast, former Mavericks majority owner Mark Cuban said, “We hurt in 2006 after it was stolen from us, and I’ll take that to my grave that it was stolen from us.”
The Miami Heat eventually won the 2006 NBA Finals, claiming the franchise’s first championship. However, it was also the beginning of the peak for superstar Dwyane Wade, who was one of the youngest players in history to win NBA Finals MVP.
“You’re not about to tarnish the work that I put in as a young guy to do something that not a lot of young guys have done in this game,” Wade said on his podcast, Time Out with Dwyane Wade on the WY Network, in response to Cuban.
It was an astounding six-game series for Wade, averaging 34.7 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 3.8 assists per game. Wade is now calling on Cuban to stop with his remarks.
“Mark, stop saying that,” Wade said. “Mark, we beat y’all. Did we get some foul calls? Everybody gets foul calls.”
In his appearance on the DLLS Mavs podcast, Cuban named two referees after saying the championship was stolen. Wade seemed to take that a bit personally, probably because the star guard averaged 16.2 free-throw attempts per game in the series, including 25 attempts in Game 5.
But just as it is every year with the eventual NBA Champion, the better team always wins.
“We had an advantage,” Wade said. “It wasn’t rigged. We figured out a way to win just like y’all figured out a way to win in 2011.”
Dallas and Miami met in the Finals twice in five years, each winning its first championship against the other. Both Finals series also coincidentally experienced dramatic comebacks.
In 2006, the Heat trailed 2-0 before storming back to win four consecutive games. Then in 2011, the Heat led 2-1 before the Mavericks rattled off three straight wins.
Despite the back-and-forth with Cuban, the future Hall of Famer expressed respect for the Mavericks’ now-minority owner. “I love Mark Cuban from afar, everything he has accomplished and everything he has done,” Wade said.
At the end of the day, Miami remains the 2006 NBA champion and Dallas the 2011 champion.
