At the end of every NBA season, there’s always one team that emerges as the alpha dog, holding the trophy and writing themselves into basketball lore, while the rest go home empty-handed. Nothing groundbreaking there.
However, the team that falls short in the Finals often suffers a different kind of heartbreak. They were right there, within touching distance, and when you come up short on the last step, it’s only natural to start looking for explanations that go beyond the hardwood.
Advertisement
That was, and honestly, still is, the case with the Dallas Mavericks, whose former majority owner Mark Cuban has never let go of the belief that the 2006 NBA Finals were rigged in favor of the Miami Heat. But if Cuban thought that story would go unchallenged, Dwyane Wade had other ideas.
“I hear Mark Cuban come out recently and say, he don’t care, he taking it to his grave: 2006 was rigged. Is what Mark Cuban said,” Wade said in the recent episode of “The Timeout.”
“Mark, stop saying that. Mark, we beat y’all. Did we get some foul calls? Everybody gets foul calls. We can all go back and point,” the retired guard added. “You had a young guy that was becoming a star in the NBA. Did I get a few whistles? Yes. But was I the only one attacking every play? Probably. So, I’mma get some whistles, too. I’mma get some calls, they were fouling. You are not about to tarnish the work I put in as a young guy to do something not a lot of young guys have done in this game.”
Advertisement
Miami pulled off a four-game comeback
Those Finals didn’t exactly start out like a fairytale for Miami. The Mavericks, led by Dirk Nowitzki, handled their business at home and took a commanding 2-0 series lead with two relatively easy wins. It all looked like Dallas was cruising toward the franchise’s first championship on the shoulders of their German Bomber.
But everything changed in Game 3. Down big late, Miami pulled off a miraculous comeback to keep the series alive, and, boom, just like that, the controversy was beginning to form.
Advertisement
Wade got 18 free-throw attempts, while Nowitzki, the Mavs’ offensive force and one of the best players in the whole league at the time, went to the line just seven times.
That’s where the conspiracy talk started.
Things escalated in Game 5, when Wade literally lived at the charity stripe, attempting 25 free throws in a one-point Heat victory. And, as the cherry on top, in the deciding Game 6 back in Dallas, he iced the series by sinking 16 of his 21 free throws to close out the title. The young Flash had officially arrived, and he got a hard-earned Finals MVP to show for it.
Advertisement
Free-throw discrepancy was obvious, but…
On paper, the numbers are hard to ignore. Wade had an eye-popping 97 free-throw attempts in the series compared to Nowitzki’s 55, which is also a realistically high number. Yeah, it may look a bit one-sided. But when you actually watched those games, it was obvious that Wade earned almost all of it. His relentless downhill drives put pressure on the Mavericks’ defense play after play, and more often than not, he got rewarded.
Advertisement
On the surface, the free-throw disparity may fuel conspiracy theories about the NBA wanting to script a perfect storyline for its rising star. But the truth, as Wade himself points out, is far simpler: he worked for it. He played harder, he attacked more often, and now, he is not letting anyone take that away from him.
Because losers will always find a way to diminish one’s success, and Dwayne just isn’t having it.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Sep 4, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.