Maverick thinking pays off for Dallas

The team has gone from perennial chokers to comeback masters.

If some dramatic developments are perfectly understandable - countries experiencing unrest, people undergoing religious awakenings - one change absolutely defies explanation.

The Dallas Mavericks, post-season juggernaut.

The Mavericks have been rolling through the regular season for the past four years, only to wilt at the first sign of real play-off adversity. It started when they blew a 2-0 lead over the Miami Heat in the 2006 NBA Finals.

Since then, they have been post-season cream puffs. Out in the first or second round every year. Soft as a feather pillow.

That looked exactly how this season was shaping up, when in the first round the Portland Trail Blazers overcame a 23-point deficit to stun the Mavericks, 84-82, and even their series at two games apiece.

Funeral services were being prepared. Sad laments were at the ready. Those poor Mavs, the simplest bit of pressure and they crumbled like feta.

Only then, the strangest thing happened. The Mavs responded. No hanging of the heads, no beaten dog look.

The Mavericks came back to win the next two games to eliminate Portland. They then swept the Los Angeles Lakers, the defending champions. They took the Oklahoma City Thunder in five and after their stirring comeback in Game 2, tied the Heat at a game each in the NBA Finals.

Since that embarrassing loss to the Trail Blazers, the Mavs have gone 11-2 in the post-season.

And three different times they have overcome a 15-point deficit in the second half to win. The way tough, gritty teams do.

They trailed the Lakers by 16 in the third quarter of Game 1 in Los Angeles, and won. They overcame a 15-point lead by the Thunder with 5:05 left in Game 4 and won. And then perhaps most shockingly, they overcame that 15-point lead by the Heat with 6:18 left in Game 2 of the finals.

"If you're going to win a championship, you've got to have the wherewithal to hang in when things are tough," Rick Carlisle, the Mavericks coach, said.

"All year, our guys have believed, and tonight was another good example."

Wherewithal, resiliency, character, mental toughness - meet the new Dallas Mavericks.

"Definitely a huge comeback for us and we never gave up," Dirk Nowitzki, the forward, said. "In this league, you've got to play to the end."

If the Mavericks have finally learnt that, it took several tough lessons. Several embarrassments along the way.

But they have clearly grown from their past, if unexpectedly. In the process, they have changed the complexion of the finals.

This had all the makings of a final coronation for LeBron James and the Heat. A fairly easy romp to a title that many felt was all but ordained when James and Chris Bosh signed on with Dwyane Wade in the off-season.

It probably would have been, too, if these were the old Dallas Mavericks.