Jet and his set lift Dirk in decider

"It wasn't about me carrying the team," said Terry about Game 6. "It was doing my job. My job is to come in and provide a spark, make plays, make shots. I did my job, and I knew Dirk continued to get the shots he was getting, those were good shots."

The Heat never got closer than seven points the rest of the way. During one possession that infuriated Heat fans in the final four minutes, Heat players played hot potato with the ball because nobody wanted to take a shot. James, who will answer to this series for a long time, didn't even look at the bucket. It seemed like Chalmers was the only Miami player interested in shooting.

"They started quitting and we got all those rebounds," Mavs guard DeShawn Stevenson told me as he walked from the locker room to the court to savor the moment.

Even seldom-used center Ian Mahinmi got a piece of the action when he nailed a 16-foot jumper to give the Mavs an 81-72 lead at the end of the third quarter. But remembering what happened in Miami five years ago, Terry wasn't taking any chances.

"That one timeout, he said to me, 'Keep pushing. Remember '06' " Nowitzki said of Terry. "He said that to me in the fourth quarter. We kept plugging. It wasn't pretty for me, but I had to keep plugging and keep fighting."

It seems that every player on the Mavs has a unique story leading up to this title. As he finished off a bottle of champagne, Dallas center Tyson Chandler talked about how so many people had written him off because of an ankle injury that hindered him for two years. Stevenson talked about being the "throw-in" piece in the trade that brought Caron Butler and Brendan Haywood to the Mavs. And 38-year-old Jason Kidd, who hit a huge 3-pointer late in the third quarter, celebrated his first title. Coach Rick Carlisle, who drilled it into his players' minds to stay in the "present," finally looked relaxed.

"A series like this gets very personal," said Carlisle. "It gets personal because we have guys that say things, and they do it to get themselves going. Then they have the incident with the camera and the coughing and all that stuff. You get to Game 5, Game 6, and it becomes personal. Our guys took it personally tonight. They were not going to be denied. Dirk and Jet have had to live for five years with what happened in 2006, and as of tonight, those demons are officially destroyed."