There’s probably more on the line for the Heat than the Mavericks.

Because if they lose in the 2011 NBA Finals, they’ll never hear the end of it from their critics. And I Got to tell you, their critics grew in numbers the moment they signed both LeBron James and Chris Bosh to South Beach.

It all started with a hint of defiance, ”Yes. We. Did.” That was the official victory slogan for the Miami Heat last summer after the franchise pulled off one of the NBA’s most spectacular free agent hauls in league history. Now, after so many months, it can end that way as well.

Four. More. Wins and the Heat’s grand experiment, cultivated so quickly on a Petri dish of such grand a scale that it has elevated the entire NBA in the process, will be validated. Four more wins and LeBron James’ decision will Silence. All. Critics. Four more victories and South Floridians will celebrate like its 1972.

Well, they better bring their A-game first and beat the Dallas Mavericks.

”We’ve been under the microscope for 100-plus games now and almost a year,” Heat forward Chris Bosh said. ”So I think all that has prepared us for this.”

The NBA Finals begin this Tuesday at AmericanAirlines Arena. Miami is certainly prepared. The city has been counting down the days to the NBA Finals since…

It certainly doesn’t look like it now. In fact, Fernando Alonso concedes the young German may have the title won already.

Vettel, who beat Alonso to the 2010 crown by four points in the final race, has had a dominant start to his title defence, winning five out of six grands prix this 2011 F1 season. And the only race he didn’t win, China, he finished in second place.

His performance out on track has given the Red Bull racer at 58-point lead over Lewis Hamilton in the race for this year’s title, prompting Alonso to suggest that Sebastian Vettel has “nearly” won his second Championship.

“I think we saw in the last couple of years that if you win five or six grand prix you’ve nearly won the Championship, on average, so if you win five of the first six, you are in a very good position,” said the Ferrari driver. “I think he’s driving fantastically. There’s no doubt that Red Bull is also doing a very good job with the car, with the pit stops, with the start, so they have a very good package and the driver is delivering on the track.”

“Now, at the moment, it’s difficult for us to beat the whole package and we will try to continue.”

As for Alonso’s own chances of beating the German, he admits that at the moment it’s “not possible” as it will take not only a remarkable effort from Ferrari but also a massive dip in form from Vettel.

“We need to win three races and he mustn’t score. I think that’s more or less the calculation which I can do now.”

“Well, I think at the moment it’s not possible, because to close…”

It’s down to the final two people.

After almost five years, the Heat and the Mavericks play once again for all the marbles, this time in the 2011 NBA Finals.

The last time these two teams met, it was for the 2006 championship where the Heat came back from a 2-0 series deficit to beat the Mavericks in six games and capture the title. And now they meet again, only this time, the Miami Heat will bring more to the table in LeBron James and Chris Bosh.

You see, Miami got the best of the Dallas Mavericks with a young Dwyane Wade and an old Shaquille O’Neal back in 2006. Five years later, you have a Miami Heat team led by a Dwyane Wade who is at the very prime of his career, joined by two fellow All-Stars in LeBron James and Chris Bosh who are both looking for their first NBA championship ring.

Can they repeat their run to the 2006 title in 2011?

I wouldn’t be so sure about it. While this version of the Heat is very different from the one that captured the title in 2006, we can say the same of the Dallas Mavericks.

Sure, they are still being led by Dirk Nowitzki who, after all these years, can still carry a team over the hump when it counts the most. We saw glimpses of that in these playoffs, especially in their series with the Oklahoma City Thunder where they were down by 15 in the final five minutes of Game 4 before Nowitzki started working it.

THAT was the turning point of that series and Game 5, where Dallas finally…

Beat Rampage Jackson. That’s what the young kid should do to earn the former light heavyweight champion’s respect.

With Thiago Silva being pulled from his UFC 130 bout with Rampage Jackson, light heavyweight Matt Hamill has been contacted to take his place.

Matt Hamill is a really interesting choice and a dangerous one if you ask me for Rampage Jackson. Hamill is coming off the biggest win of his career defeating his former coach Tito Ortiz at UFC 121. He is on a five-fight win streak which includes a controversial disqualification win over Jon Bones Jones after Jones dropped an illegal elbow.

Don’t be fooled though, Jones was dominating the fight before it was stopped. Still, it is important to take note that Hamill’s last loss came at UFC 88 against Rich Franklin via TKO in round 3.

A quick glance at this fight and it looks like an easy win for Rampage Jackson. Hamill doesn’t have the quickness that usually gives Jackson trouble. Yet a deeper look into the fight will tell you a different story.

Jackson’s win over Lyoto Machida made him the number one contender for the UFC light heavyweight title. He turned down the title shot at UFC 128 deeming a lack of training time as the issue. Jackson is 3-1 in his past four bouts with wins over Machida, Jardine and Wanderlei Silva and a lone decision loss to Rashad Evans.

A win over Matt Hamill really doesn’t do a whole lot for Jackson…

Yep, Quinton Rampage Jackson looks to get back on the light heavyweight title chase this Saturday.

The UFC returns to its home in Las Vegas, Nevada this Saturday as sin city hosts UFC 130: Rampage vs. Hamill inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena featuring, from the pay-per-view’s namesake, Quinton Rampage Jackson and Matt Hamill.

UFC 130 was supposed to be headlined by a lightweight championship rematch between champion Frankie Edgar and challenger Gray Maynard but due to injuries, they were forced to postpone the match and the fight between Rampage Jackson and Matt Hamill was moved from undercard to main event.

Some don’t like it, but being a huge fan of Rampage Jackson, I do. Although he, at times, already look like a has-been in the UFC, I still believe my boy still has something left in the tank to headline a UFC pay-per-view.

While it’s highly unlikely that Rampage is overlooking Matt Hamill, who is actually substituting for Thiago Silva who was supposed to fight Jackson this Saturday if it wasn’t for a failed drug test, it is quite possible that he is going to come out strong, looking to end the fight quickly.

Following a controversial win over Lyoto Machida which preceded a loss to Rashad Evans, Jackson’s future as a top-tier light heavyweight contender might rest on not only his ability to get beyond Hamill, but to do so convincingly.

The single most important factor that he’s up against however is…

Yes, Frank Mir returns to the Octagon.

While everybody will anticipate the main bout of UFC 130: Rampage vs. Hamill, the co-main event of the pay-per-view should be as entertaining.

Heavyweights Frank Mir and Roy ”Big Country” Nelson meet in what should be a battle between Mir’s BJJ skills and Nelson’s sheer strength. Mir and Nelson are no strangers to each other, having met at a Grapplers Quest event some years ago, in which Nelson was victorious by points.

With both Frank Mir and Roy Nelson being former champions, Mir in the UFC and Nelson in the IFL, they are also no stranger to the spotlight that comes with the territory. Nelson recently stated that with Brock Lesnar’s temporary departure from the division, the door has opened for the winner of this fight to get right back in the title mix.

Both men are BJJ black belts and have good striking. Like Nelson also stated, the winner of this fight may end up being decided by ”the guy who punches the other guy in the face more.”

It isn’t quite appropriate to call Frank Mir’s past few years in the UFC spotty, but even if you’re only as good as your last fight (or last win, even), it’s hard to believe that the former heavyweight champion is on track for another title run any time soon.

Defeating the legendary Mirko ”Cro Cop” Filipovic with less than a minute to go at UFC 119 still ultimately lent the victory little excitement, Bloody Elbow’s Jonathan Snowden called it ”one of the worst displays in the history of MMA main events.”

Unlike Mir, Nelson is not coming off a win in his last fight as he suffered a loss to…

They are a win away from doing that.

The Heat is tantalizingly close now, one victory from the 2011 NBA Finals, and Dwyane Wade and LeBron James never suspected it would take this long for them to get back.

”Me and D-Wade talk about it all the time,” LeBron James said Wednesday. ”If you had told us we wouldn’t have an opportunity to go back to the Finals five or six years, we’d have thought you were lying to us. We have a good enough shot. We don’t want to waste this opportunity.”

James hasn’t been there since his Cavaliers were swept by the Spurs in 2007. ”I think about it all the time,” he said. And as far as his teammate Dwyane Wade is concerned, he hasn’t been there since spearheading the Heat to the 2006 title.

Both can get there with a victory over the Chicago Bulls on Thursday in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Though the Miami Heat has a 3-1 cushion in the series, James makes this much clear, ”We desperately want to win, and we want to close out on their home floor.” Even now, James will occasionally watch games from his only Finals appearance ”and see how I wasn’t that good of a player, especially on both ends of the floor. You try to use those moments. I feel there’s no way a team that I’m on can’t win a game in a series. You use that as motivation.”

Long after practice ended, there was Wade still on the court, taking…

Finally.

Dirk Nowitzki wrapped his hands around the silver ball trophy that goes to the Western Conference champions and smiled. After five years, he and the Dallas Mavericks are kings of their conference again, earning the trip to the 2011 NBA Finals.

Yet Dirk Nowitzki didn’t flash the wide, toothy grin of someone relieved to have accomplished his goal. Because, he hasn’t. Unless the Dallas Mavericks win the next round, too, and become NBA champions for the first time, their whole glorious postseason, and that silver trophy, won’t mean as much. It’s a lament heard by many superstars, but Nowitzki’s indifference amid much of the frenzied celebration around him showed just how serious he is about it.

“I was already thinking about the finals,” Dirk Nowitzki said. “This is nice for a day, but we set our goals in October to win it all. We haven’t done it yet.”

Dallas capped its climb back to the NBA finals with a 100-96 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Wednesday night that ended the Western finals in five games. The young, up-and-coming Thunder made things tough on the older, now-or-possibly-never Mavericks as they had throughout the series.

And, as he has throughout the postseason, Nowitzki made the plays that mattered most. His latest highlights: swishing a 3-pointer with 1:14 left that put Dallas ahead and making a pair of free throws with 13.3 seconds left to seal it.

“It feels good to finally go back,” Nowitzki said. “This time, hopefully we can finish the job.”

The Mavs’ only other trip to the finals was in 2006. They were up 2-0, with a big, late lead in Game 3, but wound up losing to the Miami Heat in…

After the way these Mavericks stole any hope the young Thunder may have of advancing to the NBA Finals, it’s only a matter of time.

In case you missed Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals in the 2011 NBA Playoffs, the Dallas Mavericks came back from a 15-point deficit in the last five minutes of the game to force overtime and hand the young Oklahoma City Thunder a loss so tough that they may have stolen any false hope this Thunder team may have of playing for this year’s title.

The Dallas Mavericks have dealt a stunning blow indeed, beating OKC 112-105 in overtime of Game 4 after being down by as many as 15 in the final minutes of regulation.

Coming to Game 5, the Mavericks will look to deal the final blow on the Oklahoma City Thunder in front of their home crowd in Dallas. For a team that was unceremoniously booted out of the playoffs in the first round for two straight years, Game 5 for them will be redemption.

Especially for Dirk Nowitzki, the guy who, time and time again, continues to rise to the occasion for his team. Sure, he may not have those endorsement deals as much as LeBron James and Kobe Bryant does but make no mistake about it, the seven-foot German is one of the top five guys in the league right now and he is one of the rare breed of athletes in the league today that gives it all he’s got without any bullshit whatsoever.

The Oklahoma City Thunder played what might have been their worst…

It’s so sad really.

The NFL lockout is still effective as NFL owners won an appeal, likely keeping us from expecting a 2011 NFL season at least until June 3. The league’s owners received a favorable ruling when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit granted a permanent stay that, in essence, keeps the lockout in place until a full appeal is heard on June 3.

Potentially more beneficial to the owners, and damaging to the players’ cause, is language in the decision that questions U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson’s April 25 decision to lift the NFL lockout. The appellate court in Minneapolis temporarily stayed her ruling four days later. Monday’s 2-1 verdict mirrored the initial decision by the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court, and supported the NFL’s claim that it “likely will suffer some degree of irreparable harm without a stay.” NFL players have been locked out since March 12.

The two majority judges – Steven Colloton and Duane Benton – wrote that “we have serious doubts that the district court had jurisdiction to enjoin the league’s lockout” and that “our view is Judge Nelson’s interpretation is unlikely to prevail.” Judge Kermit Bye, in a lengthy argument, dissented in favor of the players, ruling to uphold Nelson’s original ruling.

The majority opinion, however, could tip the hand of the appellate court that will hear arguments on the legality of the lockout next month.

In the meantime, the stay likely means that teams will not hold minicamps this spring and that league business will not resume until, at the earliest, early June. Free agency and player trades – such as wildly speculated moves involving Eagles backup quarterback Kevin Kolb – will continue to be put on hold.

The ruling came as both sides met for another round of negotiations…