After all of the drama and buildup to the Summer of 2010, to “The Decision” and the Miami Heat’s subsequent pre-championship celebration, there was no other way this season could end. There was no way that this team, this galaxy of stars, couldn’t find a way to matter from those beginning days last July right through to the final seconds of this 2010-11 season, one that is shaping up to be one of the greatest in NBA history.

But no one – and I mean no one – could ever have hoped, or even dreamed, that the final chapters of this story would play out quite like this.

There will be other players that go down in history as being better than LeBron James. He sealed that fate for himself, lost any chance he had to lay claim to the “Greatest Of All Time” moniker when he chose to, as he put it, “Take his talents to South Beach” and join Dwayne Wade’s team, instead of going out and beating him – and everyone else – on the court. But you can make a strong case that James is the most compelling player the league has ever seen.

Until this season, he was at least everyone’s second-favorite player, if not their favorite. I don’t know anyone who didn’t like him before the events of last July ran their course. They all loved the way he played as much as the off-court persona he had created and honed to perfection. Here he was, the hometown kid, trying to lift lowly, forgotten Cleveland – the city that could never get out of its own way when it came to its sports teams – to a championship. And the way he did it, with the ball-handling skills of Jason Kidd combined with the body of Karl Malone, allowed him to do things that have never been seen on a basketball court.

But then last summer happened and, suddenly, everything changed. Outside of the peninsula of South Florida, fans around the country turned on James en masse. The man who once was cheered voraciously wherever he went instead found every opposing arena turned into a scorpion’s lair when he and the Heat came to town. Casual fans, or even people who weren’t fans of the league at all, took glee whenever the Heat lost, and were at least disappointed, if not saddened, whenever they won.

After some initial struggles, the Heat began to figure things out, to slowly, but surely, find a rhythm. They didn’t win 70 games, as some had claimed they would, but they did wind up with the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference by the end of the regular season. At that point, people were sure the Heat would lose to either the Celtics or the Bulls, were sure that they wouldn’t make it out of the Eastern Conference, were sure that this conglomerate of star power wouldn’t be rewarded so quickly. People felt especially confident about that after the Heat struggled mightily to vanquish the lowly Philadelphia 76ers in five games in the first round of the playoffs.

But then, just when the Celtics started to get things figured out in the Eastern Conference semifinals, point guard Rajon Rondo dislocated his elbow. Suddenly, the Celtics found themselves running at half-speed, their engine deprived of much of its horsepower, and they quickly, and quietly, went away in five games.

Then it was on to the Eastern Conference Finals, where the Bulls who surely would knock the Heat off their perch, a hard-nosed physical team led by the league’s Most Valuable Player this season, point guard Derrick Rose, a team that willed its way to the league’s best record thanks to what Charles Barkley called, “the best defense I have ever seen.”

And it looked like that would be the case after the Heat were torched in the first game of the series, losing the opener in Chicago by 20 points. Instead, it was James who guarded Rose down the stretch of games, who combined with Wade to make an awe-inspiring run to close out Game 5 in Chicago. It looked like the Heat, after months of searching, had finally found the right formula. Udonis Haslem returned to the lineup after missing most of the season due to injury in Game 2, and immediately gave the Heat a physical presence off the bench, something they sorely missed and desperately needed. Mike Miller, after dealing with various injuries all season long, finally began playing well, too, giving them the depth they had been lacking for the vast majority of the season.

So it was with this backdrop that the Heat entered the NBA Finals for a rematch of the 2006 series with the Dallas Mavericks – even if there were only a handful of players still on both teams from that series.

The Mavericks, in many ways, are the anti-Heat. Miami’s stars plotted their course and chose to play with one another. They thought this way the best way for them to win championships. Dallas, on the other hand, is more like the Island of Misfit Toys, a team full of cast-offs and bargain bin players, almost all of whom nearly won titles in the past, but never quite had enough to win it all.

Players like Kidd, one of the greatest point guards of all-time who willed the New Jersey Nets to back-to-back Finals appearances in the early 2000s, an achievement that probably never will be given the credit it deserves. Players like Shawn Marion, who starred as part of Steve Nash’s offensive attack in Phoenix, earning the nickname “The Matrix” for his freakish athletic ability, but who had since passed through Toronto and Miami before landing with the Mavericks. Players like Tyson Chandler, once a top-three pick in the NBA Draft but who Michael Jordan essentially gave to Dallas last summer for Erick Dampier’s non-guaranteed contract. Players like J.J. Barea, who looks like he stepped on to the court straight out of a rec league at the local YMCA, and DeShawn Stevenson, a salary throw-in acquired in a trade for center Brendan Haywood last year who has turned himself into the 2011 version of Bruce Bowen – a player capable of playing lockdown defense and hitting the corner three.

So it was this group of drifters, this band of not-quite-there’s and what-ifs, who all came to Dallas in one way or another to join forces behind the team’s lone star, Dirk Nowitzki, the sweetest-shooting 7-footer of all-time, and make one last run at that ever-elusive ring. How was this group supposed to combat the speed, strength and might of Miami’s trio of stars and its deepening bench? How was this group going to hold back what seemed like an unstoppable wave that seemed destined to crash over the NBA, to officially crown King James and give him his elusive first ring?

But, somehow, that’s exactly what these Mavericks have done. They’ve gotten one brilliant performance after another from Nowitzki, their egoless star who shoots from angles that all of us fruitlessly try to repeat to win trick-shot competitions – only he makes them with ease. They’ve gotten savvy veteran leadership from Kidd, who hit the biggest shot of his career with 90 seconds remaining in last night’s 112-103 win in Game 5 to put away the game, clutch scoring in the fourth quarter from Jason Terry and bursts of energy and scoring from Barea. They’ve gotten timely shooting and quality defense from Stevenson, who’s done an admirable job on James, as well as defense, rebounding and unexpected scoring from Marion and Chandler.

It’s taken a true team effort from Dallas to carve out a 3-2 lead in this forever series, one that constantly shifts back-and-forth, possession-by-possession, each team taking turns feeling out the other. One team will get hit hard with a punch, only to stop, gather itself, and return fire. It’s basketball being played at its highest level, in its truest form, leaving fans on the edge of their seats from the beginning to end of each game, only to immediately start counting the minutes until the next time the two teams take the floor.

And, really, this is the way it should be ending. The Heat tried to deconstruct the tried-and-true model of building a champion, instead building a team from scratch and all at once, thinking that its trio of stars would be good enough to overcome whatever was thrown their way. The Mavericks, on the other hand, have been building this team for years, slowly acquiring more and more pieces, until they made their own move that pushed them over the top last summer when they acquired Chandler.

So now, with their backs firmly against the wall, LeBron James and the Heat head back to South Beach, where the world will reconvene on Sunday night to see whether this story will play out even longer, right down to the absolute last game possible, or if the Mavericks will somehow, someway, find a way to hold back what seemed, just a few days ago, a tide that was about to sweep across the NBA landscape, ushering in a new era for the league and finally giving King James a true crown and his first championship.

After the way this year began, with James and Wade and Chris Bosh preening and dancing and celebrating last July like they’d already won a title before they’d even had a single practice together, where else could this story really end? The Heat couldn’t have been knocked out in the Eastern Conference semifinals or finals; they couldn’t win or lose the NBA Finals in Dallas. No, this truly seemed, from the beginning, to be destined to end back where it all began. Back on the shores of Biscayne Bay, where James and Wade and Bosh already began planning their parade route last summer.

This was what LeBron James asked for when he announced he was taking his talents to South Beach. This is what he said he wanted. Now, it’s time to see if he’s up to the challenge. It’s back to Miami one more time, back to Miami for the only ending this season ever could have.

Back to Miami for the end of a forever series, one that’s a fitting finale to a forever season.