My apologies to Willie S., but I come to praise Dirk Nowitzki, not to bury him.

There are two key storylines coming out of Sunday’s Game 5 victory by the Miami Heat over the struggling Dallas Mavericks, who dropped three straight contests on the road to fall behind 3-2 in this best-of-seven series. The first is the discrepancy in trips to the charity stripe – Miami had 49 free passes to just 25 for Dallas. The second, and closely related, is the way Dwyane Wade carried the Heat late in Game 5. Wade finished the day with 43 points, 21 of them on free throws.

I’m going to talk about Disco Dirk instead. There is an undercurrent in the press coverage surrounding this series that Nowitzki has lost his touch. The numbers point to a significant drop-off in production against the Heat: 21.6 points and 10 rebounds per game, but with a 37.3-percent success rate from the field. That’s down sharply from his 48-percent field-goal shooting touch during the regular season.

Which suits Dallas just fine. Udonis Haslem deserves major credit for his work defending Nowitzki, but it’s been largely a team effort. Miami is rotating defenders on Nowitzki, even bringing Shaquille O’Neal up to the perimeter on occasion. This leaves more openings for the rest of the Mavericks. Jason Terry, for example, is canning 23.2 points per game in this series. Josh Howard and Jerry Stackhouse are also scoring in double figures.

Miami also has four players in double digits, but Wade (34.4 points per game) is by and large carrying the Heat on his back. Which, again, plays into the Mavs’ strategy. They’ve been defending Wade in single coverage for the most part, throwing in the occasional zone defense. It’s worked. Wade’s scoring output has been inflated by his generous portion of free throws. His scoring accuracy has dropped from 49.5 percent in the regular season to 45.5 in this series.

It’s not going to take a return to MVP-form from Nowitzki to get the Mavs their first-ever NBA title. While Wade shines in the boxscore and the Heat take a 3-2 series lead into Dallas, the Mavs have bagged the cash in four of five games. The fifth game was the Mavs’ lone poor performance of the series, a 98-74 loss where the Heat finally got some decent production from its support players (Posey and Antoine Walker combined for 29 points, and Shandon Anderson played 19 minutes of solid defense).

Handicappers at this point can divide themselves into two camps: those who believe in intangibles, and those who don’t. If you believe Nowitzki and the Mavs are choking, based on their late collapses in Games 3 and 5, you probably belong in the former camp. Likewise if you believe that Wade has the intestinal fortitude to get the Heat to play above their heads. Keep in mind, however, that the general betting public agrees with you.

I consider myself something of a handicapping agnostic. I used to dismiss anything that couldn’t be quantified in the form of a boxscore; now, I’ve seen enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that players are indeed fallible. They don’t always perform up to their standards – anyone who has seen the New York Knicks in “action” knows what I mean. But I also think most people give far too much credence to these intangibles. That’s where a little cold, calculated rationalizing can really pay off for handicappers.

I see this in the coverage of Nowitzki and Wade. There is a cultural divide between the two. Nowitzki is a “Caucasian-European” with entertaining hair. Miami fans tried to distract him at the free-throw line by chanting “DA-vid HASS-el-hoff” in reference to the star of Baywatch and Knight Rider who happens to be a pop music icon in Germany. Wade, an “African-American,” draws comparisons to Michael Jordan because of his size and looks, but his game is really more like Allen Iverson’s. Wade has grit. He plays through pain. He draws contact. When the casual North American observer sees Wade perform in these NBA finals, he appears to be the superior player.

Handicappers cannot afford to be casual. Both players are MVP-quality candidates. How valuable is it to Dallas in this series that Nowitzki is drawing double teams? Substantially. The Mavericks have already paid off handsomely for their supporters thus far. As 6-point favorites in Game 6, they’ll be more than happy to let Wade do his thing if it gets them to the pay window again.