"We didn't have no answer for him": Dwyane Wade credits J.J. Barea as the Mavs' X-factor during their 2011 NBA Finals victory
Dwyane Wade still remembers how J.J. Barea was the X-factor for the Dallas Mavericks during their 2011 NBA championship.
Such was their legendary run that they beat the likes of some tough customers in the Portland Trail Blazers, a seasoned Los Angeles Lakers unit led by Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol and a promising Oklahoma City Thunder team to set a date with Wade's Miami Heat.
Speaking with Shannon Sharpe on "Club Shay Shay", Wade recollected how Barea was instrumental in helping Dallas decimate the Heat:
"We got out-coached by Rick Carlisle and his staff, and we got outplayed by Dirk [Nowitzki] and Jason Terry and [Jason] Kidd. But that little J.J. Barea, nobody gives him credit. J.J. Barea was the one who changed the series. We didn't have no answer for him."
He added that the Heat didn't see Barea coming:
"Ok Dirk, you know what he's gonna do. [Udonis Haslem], make his shots tough, make it hard on him. Try to make him not shoot 50 percent. Make him have an off night, but he's gonna get 20.
"Jason Terry, going right, you can't stop him. We knew all these things. But no one planned for little J.J. to come off the bench and do what he did."
With the Mavericks down 2-1 in the 2011 NBA Final, former head coach Rick Carlisle sprung a surprise by inserting Barea in the starting five.
That was the turning point for the Mavericks as the guard averaged 13.3 points and 4.7 assists by shooting 50% from the field and from beyond the arc in the three games. The end result was Dwyane Wade and the Heat losing to the Mavericks 4-2.
Dwyane Wade and the Dallas Mavericks had quite the history
While Dwyane Wade rued the fact that Miami couldn't get the better of the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, the 2006 NBA Finals between the two teams wasn't without drama either.
Following the Mavs' Game 2 loss, team owner Mark Cuban lambasted the league referees for their poor officiating and was slapped with a $250,000 fine. As for Wade, he didn't take too kindly to Cuban's lash-out and asked him to blame Dirk Nowitzki's leadership instead.
Speaking to ESPN, the recently-minted Hall of Famer then said:
“Dirk says they gave us the championship last year, but he's the reason they lost the championship because he wasn't the leader that he's supposed to be in the closing moments. That's because of great defense by us, but also he wasn't assertive enough as a leader's supposed to be.''
In the end, it was Wade and the Miami Heat who prevailed, winning 4-2, the same margin that Dallas won by when they met in 2011.