Mavericks prove to be the complete package

With an exceptional offense and a smart defense, the Mavs won their first title in team history. (EPA)

The Mavericks torched their Western Conference playoff opponents with an offense that scored at an unusually high rate and a smart defense that wasn’t dominant but was steady enough to let that ridiculous scoring attack carry the day. It took the better part of four games, but that trend prevailed again in the Finals. The Mavericks finished off the Heat with two out-of-this-world scoring games, and their defense played a huge role in limiting Miami’s offense — and LeBron James and Dwyane Wade — to B-level performances when the Heat needed more.

The Heat’s defense played a part in these final two games. It has been their rock all season, but it broke in Game 5 and again on Sunday in Dallas’ series-clinching 105-95 victory. The Mavericks punished just about every Miami breakdown. For the second straight game, too many of those collapses came with Dirk Nowitzki on the bench in the first quarter, allowing Dallas to thrive during a time when it really should be fighting just to stay afloat.

Take this sequence as Nowitzki sat: First, with about 4:20 to play in the opening period, Tyson Chandler caught Wade roving off Jason Terry, knocked Wade over with a pick and screamed for Shawn Marion to skip the ball across the court to Terry. Marion followed orders, and Terry knocked down a wide-open three-pointer. On the next Mavs possession, LeBron and Mike Miller miscommunicated about who was responsible for guarding Marion as he cut across the baseline. Marion was unguarded, and the Heat compensated by over-rotating. They forgot about Brian Cardinal in the right corner, and Jason Kidd found him for another of Dallas’ 11 three-pointers.

Two other things happened late the first quarter and early in the second quarter, both of which would carry over to the rest of the game:

• The Heat defended Terry horribly. On one play, Wade watched his own three-pointer draw iron, and in the process let Terry leak out on a fast break for a relatively easy pull-up. On another play, Eddie House, terrible all night on defense, found himself overpowered on a Terry drive in the second quarter. House later gave Terry 15 feet of space in transition, more than enough for a pull-up three. (House did something similar with J.J. Barea in the fourth quarter, backpedaling several feet after one hard Barea dribble and conceding an open three that put Dallas ahead 84-77 with 10:10 remaining.  James said afterward that might have been the biggest shot of the game.)

There were more issues elsewhere. Miami could never figure out that double screen for Terry, and it joined every other Dallas playoff opponent in struggling to contain the Barea/Nowitzki pick-and-roll.

But here’s the thing with the Mavs: They forced a lot of those breakdowns, and they exploited more of the unforced ones than most teams would have. A lot of teams, including the Heat, struggle to find an offensive identity — the sets that work, the proper way to distribute shots among players and the type of shots each player should (and shouldn’t) take. The Mavs do not have those kinds of struggles. They know exactly what they want to do on every possession, and they do it. They know what the right shots are and they work for those shots. They will break your defense, and when they do, they will find the right player to finish the job.

A lot of times, that player will be taking a three-point shot. That was by design. In the Nowitzki era, the Mavs have consistently ranked near the top of the league in long two-point shot attempts, and over the last few seasons before this one, they took only an average number of three-pointers. That style was not good enough to advance far in the playoffs, and so the Mavericks adjusted. They ranked near the bottom this season in long twos and near the top in three-point attempts. The Dallas offense was better for it. That the Mavs wrapped up the Finals by working for the right perimeter shots and hitting them was fitting. And when they missed, Chandler was too often able to outwork and outmuscle Chris Bosh for offensive rebounds — including two in the last 4:30 that allowed Dallas to kill precious time.

• The second thing that happened during that stretch early in the game: The Heat hit a rut against the Dallas zone. Wade and James each bricked long threes at the end of lazy possessions, and Juwan Howard, tasked at times with playing the middle man against the zone, committed a traveling violation.

In the end, Miami’s offense, the thing that will ultimately determine how great this team becomes, was not good enough. It did so many things well in Game 6, but it did not do them quite often enough to win.

Watch the tape and it’s all there: The Heat used LeBron as a screener. They pushed the pace and attacked Dallas in delayed transition, when the Mavs were on their heels. They posted up both Wade and James, forcing Dallas to send help. They attacked the zone by finding one-on-one mismatches for the stars, cutting aggressively off the ball and having shooters House and Mario Chalmers find soft spots. James even found enough space to attack off the dribble on pick-and-roll plays, gaining traction late in the third quarter and finding teammates near the rim.

But it just wasn’t there consistently. Wade took an ill-advised three-pointer early in the fourth quarter, and James spent about two minutes of that period standing in the right corner, watching his star teammate run things. They committed some fluky turnovers, and Kidd stripped James with five minutes left on what would be LeBron’s last truly aggressive drive of the season.

There was so much good here — much more than in some of the Heat’s clunkier games in this series. But there was also the same uncertainty and inconsistent commitment to getting the best shot that has plagued Miami all season against the best defenses. The Mavs deserve a ton of credit for that, especially for the way they defended LeBron on the pick-and-roll; Chandler played so hard and so well in walling off the paint that I wouldn’t be surprised if he sat on a beach for two weeks simply to recuperate. He was that good.

Even so, the Heat gave Dallas a bit of help. They are still figuring things out on offense, game by game, and that might be the biggest difference between the two teams. Dallas has nothing left to figure out. You can make this about LeBron if you want, and some will go off the deep end and talk of “good” beating “evil” or a selfless group of lesser players coming together to defeat a more talented set of mercenary superstars.

You’ll miss a big chunk of the point that way. Winning an NBA title is a long, unpredictable process of refinement. It’s about learning what works and what doesn’t on both ends of the court, finding the right rotation and adapting against specific strategies. It requires time, health and luck in both personnel moves (such as Dallas’ trading Erick Dampier’s nonguaranteed contract to Charlotte for what turned out to be the second-best defensive center in the league) and in-game breaks (like Miami’s missing 13 free throws on Sunday). Dallas got further along in that refinement process this season than any other team.

Think about the Mavs’ four playoff opponents. The Trail Blazers made a huge trade at the deadline for Gerald Wallace, and they had no idea night to night whether Brandon Roy could bring anything. The Lakers self-destructed, unable to defend the league’s most basic play (the pick-and-roll) or find the right balance on offense. The Thunder had no clue how to score in crunch time. Then came the Heat, with their still-evolving offense, tricky James/Wade balance, major rotation questions and two key cogs who spent much of the season injured in Miller and Udonis Haslem.

The Mavs? They were a finished product, basically, requiring only tweaks on the fringes to deal with Miami’s athleticism. They were the most refined team in the NBA in their own way, and now they are champions.