Fourteen years after winning a national title with Arizona, Jason Terry is an NBA champion (US Presswire/Matthew Emmons)

RELATED LINK: Jason Terry still coming up clutch (Percy Allen, Seattle Times)

No words were better spoken than by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, a true maverick when it comes to professional sports ownership, after his franchise won its first NBA title Sunday night.

“(Jason Terry) shoved it up everybody’s ass,” Cuban was quoted as saying in an ESPN report.

“Jet had to take all that criticism,” Cuban said. “The media was killing him: ‘He can’t perform in the playoffs. He’s not clutch in the playoffs. He’s too this, he’s too that.’”

Terry has also received criticism from Arizona fans after he mentioned that he would cheer for Washington guard Isaiah Thomas against the Wildcats this year. He told a Seattle radio station last month that if he was recruited out of his alma mater — Seattle Franklin High School — again, that he would choose the Huskies over the UA because Lute Olson is retired.

Many UA fans, administrators, and, most importantly, the Pac-10 (soon to be Pac-12) presidents do not forgive Terry for accepting more than $11,000 from two agents before his senior season of 1998-99. Although Terry has repaid the $45,362 the UA had to forfeit to the NCAA for its tournament appearance in 1999, stubborn Wildcat followers hope his jersey number “31″ is never retired.

Note to the league presidents, who currently are overwhelmingly against Terry’s jersey number retirement: Terry is much more positive for the conference’s image than negative. That’s not even worth debating.

And it has nothing to do with Terry crowned for the first time as an NBA champion. Never mind that Terry outplayed the ballyhooed LeBron James in the Finals. Who would have thought that? And how fitting?

Terry is all about substance, whereas others like James come off as a Ken doll.

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Jason Terry may not have learned how to crack up his teammates by being around the publicly reserved Mike Bibby in their two years together at Arizona (1996-98).

Terry, however, called his former point-guard mate a “jokester” on Saturday.

“Oh, he’s always funny,” Terry told a gathering of media leading up to the NBA Finals, which start tonight between his Dallas Mavericks and Bibby’s Miami Heat. “He’s a jokester, but my favorite thing about Mike is that he was never scared of the moment.

“Being a freshman, going to the NCAA tournament, leading your team (to an NCAA title in 1997). He took every big shot. He hit every big free throw.”

Although Terry is a year older than Bibby, he said he learned a valuable lesson from his ex-Arizona teammate.

“I just remember the quote they used: ‘He has ice water in his veins.’”, Terry said. “It’s always stuck with him, even in his career in the NBA.

“He’s always been willing to take and make big shots and that’s something that I implemented in my game and I’ve been the same player ever since.”

Another former teammate Josh Pastner told me Thursday that Bibby and Terry get along to this day, which exemplifies Terry’s team-first mentality because Bibby started ahead of him despite being a class younger.

Terry talked about how “excited” he was about Bibby making it to his first NBA championship series. Terry has experienced it before, in 2006 when Dallas lost to Miami, 4-2.

“Oh, I’m very excited; I’m very excited for him,” Terry said. “Again, one of us is going to walk away with that trophy. Either way it goes, I know we’re going to be excited for each other.”

Bibby continues to be a starter for the Heat because coach Erik Spoelstra trusts the way he manages the floor, and he believes Bibby’s recent shooting woes are an aberration.

Bibby established a career-high for three-point accuracy this season, but has struggled in the playoffs.

“This isn’t the first time – there have been times I can’t hit a shot,” Bibby told the Miami Herald. “It’s all in my head, not mechanical. I’m hard-headed. I miss a shot and put too much stress on the next one.”

Bibby finished sixth in the league in three-point accuracy (44  percent) and ninth in three-pointers (153). But his playoff percentage is 24.5 on attempted threes (12 for 49) and 26.3 overall.

His assist-to-turnover ratio is un-Bibby-like (18- 14), but Spoelstra likes Bibby’s overall steady style of play.

“This is what you wait your whole life for, dreaming since you were a little kid,” Bibby said of his first NBA Finals appearance.

The odd point-guard couple of Mike Bibby and Jason Terry meets again, this time in the NBA Finals.

The fire of Terry matched with the ice of Bibby made Arizona’s chemistry flow 14 years ago when the Wildcats won the NCAA title. Now they will try to offset the other for their first NBA ring.

“They were always different,” former teammate Josh Pastner said this morning from his Memphis basketball office, where he is approaching his third season as the Tigers’ head coach. “J.T. was always outgoing, the funny guy. Mike was the quiet one.

Jason Terry #31 of the Dallas Mavericks takes a jump shot against Mike Bibby #10 of the Sacramento Kings at the American Airlines Center in a 2007 game at Dallas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

“But as competitors they’re very much the same. Very intense. They had absolutely no conflicts (with Bibby starting as a true freshman and Terry the top sub as a sophomore in 1996-97). They actually got along and respected each other.”

More than 13 years after they played their last game together with the Wildcats — an Elite Eight loss to Utah in 1998 after winning it all in 1997 — Bibby and Terry still have championship aspirations. Bibby and the Miami Heat host Terry and the Dallas Mavericks Tuesday in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.

Seventeen Arizona alums have appeared in the last 16 seasons, including Terry in 2006 when the Mavericks lost to the Heat. This is Bibby’s first trip to the championship round.

Overall, the UA alums have won a total of 12 NBA championships. The last time a pair of former Wildcats met in the NBA Finals was in 2003, when Steve Kerr and San Antonio defeated Richard Jefferson and New Jersey, 4-2.

Aside from their skills — Terry’s defense and timely shooting and Bibby’s playmaking and setting the tone — Pastner said one significant reason why they are in the NBA Finals goes back to their two years together at Arizona.

“Look at it this way: A lot of their development occurred when they went against each other every day in practice at the UA,” Pastner said. “I mean, you’re talking about two lottery picks competing hard against the other for two years under a Hall of Fame coach like Lute Olson.

“For those guys to be still going strong after all these years speaks volumes for what Coach Olson did for those guys and that program.”

The beginning of the 1996-97 season was not easy for Terry, who realized Bibby was a highly-touted recruit from Phoenix Shadow Mountain brought in to be the starter. Terry played approximately 10 minutes a game as a freshman in 1995-96, biding his time behind Reggie Geary.

Three games into the 1996-97 season, Terry was shooting only 34.4 percent from the field. In a pivotal bounce-back win after the Wildcats lost at New Mexico, Terry led the UA over Utah and All-American forward Keith Van Horn in Anaheim. Terry scored 19 points on 7-of-10 shooting, had four assists and only one turnover.

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