“There were two things that pissed us off in” – Brendan Haywood breaks down the disrespect that lit a fire under the Mavs in the 2011 Finals originally appeared on Basketball Network.
East Coast – West Coast rivalries have truly made the NBA special over the years. And as they feel like they’re becoming rarer in the modern NBA, it’s worth remembering the biggest one of the 2000s — between the Dallas Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki and the Miami Heat’s Dwyane Wade.
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In 2006, Wade delivered one of the greatest individual Finals performances ever, leading the Heat to their first franchise title after returning from a 0–2 deficit.
Five years later, they met again in the Finals. But this time, Wade had LeBron James and Chris Bosh by his side. Tensions between Wade and Nowitzki had carried over from the ’06 Finals, especially after Wade indirectly took a shot at Dirk, saying he wasn’t the kind of leader you need in closing moments. Dirk’s 2011 teammate Brendan Haywood recalled the moment everything escalated.
“There were two things that pissed us off in that series,” he said in the Run Your Race podcast. “The first one — if you go back to Game 2, they could’ve knocked us out. They’re up like 15 with five minutes to play. When they go up by 15, D-Wade scores right in front of our bench and he and Bron shoot like a mini rap video.
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“The second thing we didn’t like in that series was that Dirk was really sick and they thought it was play time. Bron and D-Wade were like, ‘Cough cough, I’m sick, man.’ Man, we dialed in, because at that point it was like, ‘Yo, dude, don’t even say nothing to nobody.’ At that point, Dirk really didn’t like D-Wade based on what happened in the last Finals and what D-Wade said after those Finals,” Haywood concluded.
Dirk got his revenge on D-Wade
The rest is history. According to the oddsmakers, the Mavericks were the biggest underdog to ever win a title in that series. Dirk got his revenge on D-Wade for the 2006 Finals.
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Looking back, it really was the biggest rivalry of that era, especially considering everything that happened off the court.
Wade admitted years later that he and Dirk couldn’t even look at each other, to the point where they didn’t greet one another at the All-Star Game.
“In 2006, we won a championship. Me and Dirk started having some words, right?” the Miami Heat legend explained on The Why with Dwyane Wade. “And then 2007, 2008, so forth, so on, Dirk and I see each other All-Star Weekend. We don’t even dap up. You know, All-Stars, you go out there and at least dap up. Me and Dirk wouldn’t even look at each other. We had beef in the All-Star Game, bro.”
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The Mavs’ postseason was one for the ages
And that’s the greatness of Nowitzki. Nowitzki, against all odds, ran past Wade and his superstar teammates in that 2011 Finals. The magnitude of what the Mavericks accomplished that year is best shown by the path they had to take. In the first round, they knocked out the Portland Trail Blazers led by Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge.
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Then, they swept the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers with Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol. In the Western Conference Finals, they defeated three future MVPs — Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook — leaving them with just one win.
Historically speaking, it’s hard to imagine anyone topping what the Dallas Mavericks did that postseason, considering the path they had to go through to reach the Finals. As for Nowitzki, even though he didn’t have a star-studded team like Wade did, he had teammates like Haywood who were ready to go to war for him, and they proved that in the Finals.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 20, 2025, where it first appeared.