Heat's killer instinct is finely honed

MIAMI — The Dallas Mavericks just learned a valuable if costly lesson: The team they're facing in the NBA Finals is not in any way the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Miami Heat are made of closers. They are battle-tested and not in the slightest fatigued. They are unified. And their championship days are still ahead of them, not behind them.

If the Mavericks hope to put off the South Beach coronation by a year or so, it's best they adjust to that fact. Quickly.

Because the guys from South Beach have used a season of hate, doubt and isolation to turn themselves from late-game weaklings into cold-blooded killers.

"We always said we would figure it out," LeBron James said after his team won Game 1 of the NBA Finals, 92-84, Tuesday night. "We always believed in our abilities. We always believed as a team. Everything we went through, the pitfalls and the downs, was going to turn and make its course.

"We just stuck with it and understood it."

Through all they endured, the Miami Heat were, to be sure, a remarkably talented team. They were so talented that their coming together, and how it happened, changed the league and each of the Big Three's interactions with fans.

In powering past the Mavericks to claim a 1-0 series lead, that talent again was front and center. Dwyane Wade returned to form when his team needed him most, scoring 15 of his 22 points in the second half on a night in which he added 10 rebounds and six assists.

LeBron James was again magnificent with his 24 points, nine rebounds and five assists. And Chris Bosh, despite 5-of-18 shooting, bridged key moments early in the game when Wade was still floundering and LeBron was not taking as many shots.

But those three alone are not what make Miami so dangerous.

It's their sudden surge of late-game greatness — a killer instinct that's surfaced in these playoffs — that differentiates the Heat from other teams the Mavericks cast aside on their way to the Finals.

This is what the Mavericks met in Miami: A daunting Big Three (Bosh included), a rejuvenated and suddenly sharpshooting Mario Chalmers (12 points and 3-of-7 three-point shooting), a healthy and contributing Udonis Haslem (seven points and five rebounds) and even the likes of Juwan Howard (three offensive rebounds on a night the Heat had 16 of them to Dallas' six).

Just across the bay from South Beach, the haven of fun that helped lure LeBron's enormous talents, the Mavericks found out what so many other teams have the past few months:

That you can be in a game at AmericanAirlines Arena, you can feel good about a slight lead at the half, you can remain close down the stretch  — and then it's over. And you've lost.

"For the most part, we think we had our chances to get hold of this game, and we let it out of our hands," Mavericks forward Shawn Marion said.

That can happen against the Heat as they're now constructed. On Tuesday, Miami employed a paralyzing defense, particularly late in the game (the Mavericks scored only 40 points in the second half), to again hammer home the fact they are championship-worthy on both sides of the ball.

Marion, Dirk Nowitzki, Mark Cuban and the rest of Mavericks Nation (much bigger now with only Dallas standing between LeBron and his first title) tasted firsthand how elusive victory has become for teams facing the Heat late in close games.

"I mean, you hold a team to 38 percent (shooting) and 92 points, for us that's usually a victory," Marion said.

Usually, yes. But the Heat are not a usual adversary.

They are not the Lakers, capable of blowing a 13-point lead at home, capable of imploding and looking old and being disposed of in four games.

They're not even the Miami Heat — at least not the version that played most of the regular season's 82-game schedule.

The old Heat team, down by a single point going into the second half, would have been visibly vulnerable as the end of play approached.

That's why the old Heat team went 18-19 against teams that finished with winning records in the regular season. Until late in the season, they were 10-18 against such opponents.

They're now 13-3 in the playoffs.

It's why the old Heat went 25-18 in games decided by 10 or fewer points. The new Heat have boasted a 10-1 record in the playoffs in those situations.

"We just used the fourth quarter — said, ‘All right, defensively we just have to win this game,'" Wade said.

Yes, their defensive acumen is real and paramount, but the Heat did more. They did what they hadn't early on. They did what the Lakers could not against Dallas, what few teams have: They, yet again, found the best part of themselves late in the game — in key plays, big shots and a strutting confidence that is no longer a sham or a prayer.

These guys believe because, finally, they don't just know how good they can be. They know they're finally that good.

To drive home the point, LeBron hit a jumping and leaning three-point shot at the end of the third quarter that was so athletic it was almost unfair. Then, with 2:48 left in the game, LeBron drove and threw down a crazy dunk, drawing the foul as the crowd erupted. His free throw gave the Heat an 85-75 lead and effectively sealed the game.

But in case anyone missed it, he threw down another monster dunk with 38 seconds left.

Wade, too, got in on the act. He hit a huge three with 3:06 left to give his team a nine-point lead. Haslem added five fourth-quarter points of his own — a reminder of just how significant his return has been to this team.

The Miami Heat will neither go quietly nor — late in games — easily.

But there's this fact as well, lurking in the aftermath of Game 1: The Dallas Mavericks were in this game. It is almost certain that J.J. Barea will not miss so many easy buckets (he was 1 of 8), and his teammates will not combine to shoot 37.3 percent throughout this series.

This is a Finals between two championship-caliber teams that's just getting started.

The Miami Heat are most certainly not the Los Angeles Lakers. Just as the Dallas Mavericks, with their veteran team and 7-foot star, are not at all the Chicago Bulls.

"You can't get down with a loss," Nowitzki said, his own 27-point and eight-rebound night a reminder of what the Heat still must confront. "You have to come back strong on Thursday."

The road to a championship is long, arduous and unpredictable. The Heat have shown they can grow from such a journey and turn, along the way, into a team made for the end of games.

If the Mavericks hope to defeat them, they'll have to prove they can do the same.

You can follow Bill Reiter on Twitter.