One of the things sports writers love to do is find a narrative that explains the improbable and unlikely. When Albert Pujols hit a towering home run off Brad Lidge in an NLCS game, Lidge supposedly went in the can. His ERA ballooned to 5.28 the following season, and everyone attributed it to the mental breakdown we assumed he created when Pujols clobbered him. But then a funny thing happened. In 2008, just a couple years later, Lidge had an amazing year. He converted all 41 of his regular season saves and all 7 of his postseason saves, compiling a 1.95 ERA and joining Eric Gagne as the only closers in history to have a perfect season. He finished fourth in the Cy Young voting behind only Tim Lincecum, Brandon Webb and Johan Santana, and the Phillies won only their second championship in the span of over 110 years. If that wasn’t enough to shell the perception that he had lost it, nothing would.
A Legacy Redefined
And you know what? There are STILL people who think that Lidge has never been the same since he gave up that home run. A Cy Young-contending perfect season and championship be damned.
Which is why what Dirk Nowitzki is doing needs to be taken into account. Before this postseason, the narrative on Dirk was that he, and by extension the entire Mavericks roster, was a complete choker -- a regular season star who shrunk under the bright lights and wilted under pressure. There was a litany of evidence to support this. The Mavericks had a 13-point lead with over 6 minutes left in Game 3 of the 2006 finals, with a win giving them a 3-0 series lead and assuring them of their first title in franchise history. The Mavs not only blew that lead but then lost the next three games as well, evaporating in a cacophony of bad officiating, bonehead mistakes and brilliant plays by Dwyane Wade.
And then there was 2007, when they fell to the 42-win Golden State Warriors in the first round despite winning 67 games and having the best record the league had seen in seven years. And then there was 2008 when they lost to the Hornets in the first round, and 2009 when they were outmatched by the Denver Nuggets, and 2010, when they unexpectedly lost to the San Antonio Spurs in the first round. For about five straight years, we've had nothing to contradict the notion that Nowitzki was anything but a big-game performer and that the Mavericks' window was closing, if it hadn't already closed.
To erase five years of perception in only two months, without even winning a championship, is nothing short of astounding. But that's exactly what Nowitzki's done through three rounds and two finals games. In this postseason, the Mavericks trampled the Lakers, a team they had no business winning, and then overpowered the Thunder with a series of unlikely come-from-behind wins, and Dirk playing out of his mind. And last Thursday, with the Mavericks down 13 with 6 minutes left in Game 2, they flipped the script, doing exactly what Miami had done to them five years earlier, with Dirk scoring the last 9 points for the Mavs including the game-winner.
And just like that, Dirk Nowitzki is a closer. Changing the minds of ardent, argumentative sports writers is hard to do, particularly when the argument in question has been running for over five seasons -- or, to put that in perspective, longer than Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush have been in the NFL. But that's how incredible Nowitzki has been. Even stripping away his god-like free-throw percentage, scoring average and clutch shots, he's carried an absolute P.O.S., no-chance-in-hell team to within three home wins of a championship. Remember, a lot of people thought they wouldn't even beat Portland in the first round. Dallas' second-best player and only other legitimate scoring option, the guy who was supposed to be their starting small forward, Caron Butler, has missed the entire postseason. Rodrigue Beaubois, the guy who was supposed to be their starting shooting guard after a brilliant performance in the 2010 postseason versus the Spurs, missed half the season and can't even got off the bench.
What Dallas has left can best be described as a hodge-podge of has-beens and failures. Besides Dirk, the rest of the starting lineup consists of DeShawn Stevenson, Shawn Marion, Tyson Chandler and Jason Kidd, who were all once highly-sought-after players... about three years ago. Of those four, only Marion is averaging in double-digits for these playoffs, and you can hardly consider him an offensive threat when about ninety percent of his points are tap-ins and layups. The rest of the offense comes primarily from the bench, between Jason Terry, Peja Stojakovic and J.J. Barea -- but that's still not enough to make this team a finals contender.
It’s all Dirk. He’s shooting 50.5% from the floor, 51.4% from the downtown and 93.5% from the foul line in the playoffs -- incredible numbers that epitomize how tremendous he’s been. If Dirk doesn’t have a good game, then the rest of the offense, which mostly comes from three-point shooting, doesn’t open up, and the team is guaranteed to fail. The only way Dallas can win is if he has a great game every time out, and so far, he’s done exactly that.
Whether he can carry them to a championship or not remains to be seen, but even if he doesn’t, just getting the Mavs this far is an accomplishment in and of itself. He’s obliterated the notion that he can’t come through in the clutch; now all that’s left is for him to establish a new narrative of his own: that he’s one of the greatest, clutchest players of all time, AND a champion.
