Dirk Nowitzki and Michael Finley combine for 54 vs the Phoenix Suns in 2005 playoffs

The Dallas Mavericks are officially on their All Star break, not having a real game to play until next Wednesday after beating the Thunder Wednesday night. Never fear, though, we’ll still have things to share over the coming days.

Our man PandaHank41 (subscribe to his channel!) comes through once again with a video of the highlights of Mavericks greats Dirk Nowitzki and Michael Finley, this time against the Phoenix Suns in game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals.

If you’re old enough to recall this series, then you’ll know the Mavericks lost in six games against a Suns team that was an absolute force of nature. They’d gotten Steve Nash in free agency as the Mavericks chose to let him walk then when injuries forced new coach Mike D’Antoni’s hand, they started playing small ball with second year power forward Amare Stoudemire at center where they ran the pick and roll to death, terrorizing teams in the paint while also bombing away from three.

This was the last real hurrah for Dirk and Finley, teammates since Nowitzki had joined the team following the 1998 draft. The Mavericks chose to use the “Amnesty clause” to get out from under the nearly $52 million left on Finley’s contract in the ensuing off season.

As you can see from the highlights and the box score, the Mavericks needed every single point from Dirk and Finley, with Avery Johnson only opting to play just two bench players in Jerry Stackhouse and Marquis Daniels and neither were able to get much going scoring-wise.

Finley turned back the clock for Dallas, playing 41 minutes and going five of six from three. Dirk did work to the tune of 23 points and 12 boards.

It’s fun watching these videos and refreshing my memories of certain teams because as I age I remember guys differently than what actually happened. My last solid memory of Finley really is the 2003 playoffs at this point but the Mavericks moved so many pieces in and out during the Dirk era, that a lot of the time my memory is wrong on the specifics.

Again, subscribe to PandaHank41! He does killer work and has a great collection of videos.