by Micah Hart

After each game day until the end of the NBA Finals, we’ll be taking a look at the conventional wisdom of the moment — which team is the current favorite to win it all, and which team should be ashamed to still be putting on its jerseys.

Here’s how it looks on the morning of Wednesday, June 8.

Start planning the parade:

Dallas Mavericks

The screenplay I am writing about the Mavericks’ championship season is starting to become too fantastic. I may have to tone it down so it will be a little more believable when I start shopping it to the studios.

Come on, Dallas, really? You win a game when your franchise, the one guy who has to have it going for you at all times, comes down with the flu, has a bad shooting night, commits the ultimate sin of MISSING A SINGLE FREE THROW, and you still somehow pull out another come-from-behind victory?

Walt Disney won’t even look me in the eye with that pitch.

Clearly, this Dallas team is more than just Dirk Nowitzki. Jason Terry, for all his yapping the last few days, did what champions do and backed up his talk when it counted.

Dirk, unlike LeBron James, knows what to do when the chips are pushed in to the middle – he attacks. He couldn’t hit water from a boat last night from the perimeter, but still managed to score more points in the fourth quarter than LBJ did in the entire game, and that, my friends, ain’t a coincidence.

They may have to disinfect the Larry O’Brien trophy after Nowitzki touches it because of the German’s germs, but so be it. The Mavericks storybook ending is just two games away now.

Give it up already:

Miami Heat

Gregg Doyel, you were a game early with your question for LeBron. Scottie Pippen thinks this guy could be better than Jordan? MJ never scored less than eight points in a Finals’ quarter, forget a whole game.

Dwyane Wade has got to be rethinking his decision to re-up with the Heat in the offseason. After all, he could have gone home to Chicago and made sweet music with a guy like Derrick Rose who actually, you know, doesn’t pretend there is an invisible forcefield around the painted area when the season is on the line, doesn’t play hot potato with the basketball as soon as it touches his hands in the fourth quarter.

Here is a stat: 44-9. You know what that stands for? That is the scoring numbers for Dirk vs. LeBron in the fourth quarter of the four Finals games so far. Don’t tell me that doesn’t mean something. It means everything. James can say all he wants about making the right basketball play, hitting the open man, etc., but last I checked the best way to win a basketball game is to score more points than the opposition. When you are playing 3-on-5 every possession, you are going to have to actually attempt a shot or two on occasion.

Seriously, how do you lose that game with Wade playing the way he did? How do you blow another big fourth-quarter lead?

Put that coffee cup down, LeBron. Coffee is for closers only.

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