The NBA Finals series that sparked Dwyane Wade's Hall of Fame career, and the one that helped put the Miami Heat on the map, still haunts former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to this day.
Cuban admitted as much on a recent podcast with DLLS Mavs. During the interview, Cuban said that he still believes that series was "stolen" from the Mavs. Objectively speaking, "stolen" is an interesting word choice for "Dwyane Wade just took over the series and was far and away the best player on the floor" after the first two games.
"I’ll take that to my grave that it was stolen from us."Cuban on the 2006 NBA Finals
Famously, the Mavs took a 2-0 series lead before Wade took over from the final six minutes in the fourth quarter on. The Heat, led by the heroics of Wade, would go on to win the next four games in the series en route to their first NBA Championship in team history.
This NBA Finals run from Wade would also catapult him to one of the best careers for a shooting guard in league history. During that series, Wade, on his way to winning NBA Finals MVP, would go on to average 35 points, eight rebounds, and four assists on 47 percent shooting from the field.
That legendary NBA Finals from Wade still holds up as one of the most impressive individual performances in NBA history.
Mark Cuban still got his revenge
This song and dance from Cuban is always funny to talk about, considering he did eventually get his revenge on Wade and the Heat. Even though the Mavs struggled to recover from that 2006 meltdown, they still got their redemption.
Dallas would beat the Heat in the NBA Finals five years later, in 2011. That NBA Finals series would be remembered as one of the big "what ifs" in Heat history.
In the first year of the LeBron James era, the Heat blew a 2-1 series lead of their own in the NBA Finals. The Mavs would end up beating the Big 3 in six games.
Still, that's not enough for Cuban to stop talking about what transpired in 2006.
To be perfectly honest, that's downright selfish, especially considering that the pain Mavs fans felt in 2006 couldn't have been worse than what Heat fans felt in 2011. The embarrassment, disappointment, and irony from that entire series are something that many have yet to fully recover from.
Interestingly enough, there's a lot that Cuban and Heat fans can empathize with each other.