“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” His name? Michael Jordan. You may have heard of him.
This quote speaks to anyone who has ever thought about failure. I’m sure failure was on the minds of Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, Jason Terry, and the rest of the Dallas Mavericks team in Game Two of the NBA Finals.
With six and a half minutes left, they found themselves down 88-73, all the momentum against them, and a raucous Miami crowd high fiving and dancing as if the game was already over.
But if the game was over, someone forgot to tell the Mavs. As history will show, they stormed home on the back of a 22-5 run, led by their ‘Big Three’ (Dirk and the Jasons), and stole home court advantage from the Miami Heat.
For those three, this was more than just one game. This was the culmination of years of failure. Dirk and Terry were the last surviving relics of the Dallas team that lost to the Heat five years ago in the finals, and were there again the next season when they were eliminated in shocking style by the bottom-seeded Golden State Warriors.
Jason Kidd had been there twice with the New Jersey Nets, only to see his chances fade away. For another veteran like Shawn Marion, this was his first time in the finals at all, after coming close with Phoenix.
Even coach Rick Carlisle has failed on the big stage, having lost as coach of the Indiana Pacers a decade ago. This is a team filled with people who have had their fingertips on the championship, only to see it slip away.
So when they look across the court, and see a team featuring two of the greatest players in the world (Wade and Lebron, you may have heard of them), a team with solid contributors in Bosh, Miller, Chalmers, Bibby, a more than capable coach in Eric Spoelstra, and perhaps one of the savviest General Managers in NBA history in Pat Riley, these Mavs do not see any of that.
These Mavs see a team of mostly young players who got bored with their mediocre teams, and united to try creating a super-team. The Mavericks? They’re a bunch of veterans and eager talents, hand-selected by Hollywood-friendly GM Mark Cuban, to surround the greatest Mav in history in Dirk Nowitzki.
These are guys who have done everything to win, and come short, and now it seems they won’t let it happen again. They won’t be intimidated, because they see what they need to do to reach their goal.
Let’s get more specific. If you have to pinpoint a moment in the game when Dallas turned it on, you’ll notice it’s tough to find. After Wade scored a three to put Miami up 15, it looked like Dallas was done. They called a timeout, and something must have clicked.
It was subtle at first.
Terry made a jumper, and then the team defended a Miami offence well. Got the rebound, and scored on the break. Two more foul shots from Terry, and they had brought it back to nine points. Another stop. Kidd made a big three after Dirk was double teamed. Down six.
It happened so quickly, I don’t think Miami quite knew what to do. They struggled to get any offence going, tried to run the clock down, but ultimately took bad shots and were out-rebounded all the way.
Miami shot 53 percent from the floor for the first 41 minutes, and shot nine percent for those last seven. Their only basket? A tying three from Mario Chalmers with twenty four seconds left, a three that made me feel certain this game was going to overtime.
But trusty Dirk, he did what he’s been doing all season – making up for past failures. Gone are the days where Dirk was soft. After all this time in the NBA, Dirk is now showing why some feel he is not just one of the best players in the world today, but one of the best players ever.
He scored the Mavs last nine points, including a fabulous left handed layup (with an injured finger on his left hand) with three seconds left to give the Mavs the lead for good.
For Lebron, Wade and company, if they lose this series, they’ll look back on this game and think about the mistakes they made, and what they need to do better next time. For Dallas – the oldest of the 16 teams that qualified for the playoffs – this could be the last time.
Kidd is 38, and even if he plays next season, this is perhaps his last hurrah as a player of relevance. Marion and Terry are slowly losing the explosiveness that made them so dangerous, and Peja Stojakovic doesn’t quite seem to have the killer threes down pat like he used to. Dallas cannot afford to let this one slip away.
Down 15, in Miami, with the crowd and opposition taunting them, the Mavs realised something.
I like to think they looked back on all those missed shots, all those losses, and all those times they were trusted to make the game-winning shot and failed, and thought, perhaps now we can lay those demons to rest.
Instead of going back to Dallas down 2-0 and facing a young, talented and very dangerous Miami team, they go to Dallas even 1-1 with momentum and a shocked Miami side that isn’t yet sure what took place. Dallas now has three games at their home fortress, and if they win all three, they will finally be NBA Champions.
For Lebron and the Heat, this is just another hand of poker. They’ll come back next time and play better. But for the Dirk and the Mavs, this is their all-in moment. This time though, they’ve found a way to win. Just when it seemed it was a foregone conclusion, these Mavs fought their demons and perhaps swung this title fight in their favour.
Being a basketball coach, I often like to tell kids the story of Michael Jordan getting cut from his high school basketball team. I talk about how many shots he’s missed, and yet, how he uses that motivation to do better, so that one day he could call himself a champion.
Perhaps one day I will get to tell the kids about how the Mavs came back and found a way to win, when failure was once again staring them in the face. Failure can be used to make our success that much more beautiful.
I think there’s a seven-foot German who’d be smiling after hearing that.
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