Congratulations to the 2006 NBA champion Dallas Mavericks, who completed the sweep that everyone had predicted on Sunday night, finishing off the pathetic, doddering Miami Heat 2 games to 2.

I mean ... uh ...

Will we never learn? Didn't we just go through this last year, when San Antonio blew Detroit out of the water in Games 1 and 2 at home and everyone figured the series wouldn't even go back to San Antonio? It went back, for a seventh game, and might not have if Robert Horry hadn't hit that three in overtime in Game 5 in Detroit and bailed the Spurs out.

One last time: wins in the first two games at home do not a series victory make. These are the Finals, not the first round between the No. 1 and 8 seeds.

Now, we have to ponder this: does a team that scores SEVEN POINTS in the fourth quarter of a Finals game even deserve to win a championship? And these are the Dallas Mavericks, not the Knicks of the early '90s. Obviously, they're not playing the Phoenix Suns anymore. The Heat tried to give them Game 4 in the fourth quarter when they insisted on leaving Gary Payton in the game and turned the ball over seemingly every time they went upcourt - and Dallas never even made a game of it. And Dirk Nowitzki's newfound status among the elite is in serious jeopardy. That was horrendous. This is the same team that was six minutes away from putting a headlock on the series with a 3-0 lead, and two nights later, when it's crunch time again, they shoot like your kids' midget CYO team.

Meanwhile, Shaquille O'Neal appears not to be a dead man walking after all. Maybe Wilt Chamberlain was disrespected more routinely during his career than Shaq is, but I'd need to see proof. Fat, old and lazy is what lots of people who ought to know better were saying, not just after Game 2 when he scored five points, but after Game 1, and even after Game 3. Lazy - that's the one I'm not getting; I have no clue about where that comes from. For whatever reason, he is not ever supposed to be injured or exhausted - or just aging or beaten up after 14 NBA seasons.

Enough already. It's as if people think they're watching Benoit Benjamin or Michael Olowokandi instead of a guy who's going for his fourth championship in six trips. Even when he was putting up 40 and 20 with the Lakers, Kobe was supposedly always "saving'' him in the fourth quarter, and now that he's putting up 17 and 12, it's as if he's picking up his paycheck while wearing a stocking cap over his face. He actually can still play a little bit. Not as well as Dwyane Wade - 36 points, on a supposed bad knee - but then again, at this point, who can?

Oh, and he hit his free throws. Just like he said he would, back when people were saying he's nothing but a 7-1, 330-pound albatross that teams have to win in spite of. Sometimes, you have to laugh.

It's not going to help the Mavs to mug the Heat players to slow them down. Maybe the weirdest exchange of the night was the debate between Mike Breen and Hubie Brown, throughout the numerous replays from several angles, about whether Jerry Stackhouse's cheap shot on Shaq on that third-quarter breakaway was a flagrant foul or not. They should have thrown a flag on it, never mind call a flagrant. You've got to love how fast Pat Riley got to the other end of the court to keep players apart. He's still got the quicks. He was doing that 10 years ago, back when the Knicks were brawling every other night, including playoff games.

Riley, as this unfolds, is looking like a great coach again, while not making Avery Johnson look like less of a coach. Johnson can't take his players' shots for them. Then again, it was Riley who said (in this series and lots of times in the past) that a series really doesn't begin until the home team loses. That hasn't happened yet, and apparently his players got the message while everyone else was imagining the sight of David Stern handing the trophy to Mark Cuban.

(Including me, by the way. That's the exact conversation I was having with a friend while driving home Tuesday night, having left a restaurant where I had watched Game 3 because the Heat looked done going into the fourth quarter. I was crossing Pratt Street when that friend said, "Hey, Miami's winning and there's only three seconds left! But Dirk's going to the line; it's probably going into overtime.'' Fateful last words. Yes, I was wearing a headset while I was driving and talking.)

Having said all that, Dallas is still the better team, should still win the series, and probably will win Game 5 in Miami, because it's almost impossible for the home team to win the middle three games of the Finals. Yet seeing them win two straight, the way they did to start the series, is difficult, so let's say again that it's going seven. To match the number of points the Mavs scored in the fourth quarter. It's going to be a while before I get over that. The other night, Stackhouse scored that many in about 10 seconds at the end of the first half, on two shots. I mean, c'mon, seven points. That's unfathomable. That goes against everything this postseason has been about. It's just wrong.