Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade, left, and Shaquille O'Neal celebrate after winning against the Dallas Mavericks in 2006.

In June 2006, Dwyane Wade was a buoyant, boyish 24-year-old with an armful of shiny trophies and a perfectly naïve vision of the future. The Miami Heat had just claimed the N.B.A. championship, with Wade as the most valuable player. And Wade was certain — absolutely certain — that he was on the precipice of something great and enduring.

“I’m thinking, ‘This is the way it is,’ ” Wade said, recalling the moment with a rueful grin. “And then — ‘Bam!’ — reality sets in. This is not the way it is.”

It is a lesson learned the hard way by most who reach the N.B.A. peak.

Championship snapshots are rarely previews of the future, but fleeting moments in time. They cannot be properly put in context until years later.

As Wade knows now, that 2006 title was not the beginning of an era, but the payoff for a singular bold stroke — the 2004 trade for Shaquille O’Neal. The dividends were temporary, the pain long term.

It took five years of rebuilding, a 15-win season, three first-round playoff flameouts and the greatest free-agent haul in history for Wade to return to the N.B.A.’s grandest stage. There, he will find the Dallas Mavericks waiting once more.

The 2011 finals, which begin Tuesday in Miami, will conjure instant comparisons to 2006, when the Heat lost the first two games, then rolled the Mavericks the next four. But aside from familiar jerseys and a few familiar faces, there is almost nothing in common between the two series.

Wade and Udonis Haslem are the only players left from the Heat’s championship roster. Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry are the only holdovers in Dallas. Pat Riley, who coached the Heat in 2006, is now a reclusive roster architect, seen but rarely heard. Avery Johnson, who coached the Mavericks, is coaching the Nets.

Nowitzki returns to the finals with Jason Kidd, another aging star in search of his first title, and a much sturdier supporting cast, with Tyson Chandler at center and Shawn Marion at small forward. Wade returns, of course, with one of the greatest lineups in history, with LeBron James and Chris Bosh at his side.

This series will bear little resemblance to the first one — unless officiating and Mark Cuban, the Mavericks’ owner, somehow take center stage again.

Wade averaged an incredible 34.7 points, 7.8 rebounds and 3.8 assists in leading Miami to the championship. But the series was, to everyone’s detriment, largely defined by whistles, wailing and controversy. Wade attempted a record 97 free throws in the six games, and 25 in Game 5, when he led the Heat to a 101-100 overtime victory.

The Mavericks were furious for most of the series, never more so than after the Game 5 defeat. Cuban angrily confronted the referee Joe DeRosa on the court and later cursed during an interview. Cuban was fined $250,000 for what the league classified as “several acts of misconduct.”

Cuban was not the only one on edge. Johnson was furious over an O’Neal elbow to the head of Nowitzki in Game 4 — an act that went unpunished. He was incensed that the league suspended Jerry Stackhouse for a flagrant foul on O’Neal in that same game. The usually stoic Nowitzki was fined $5,000 for punting the ball into the stands in Game 5.

There was self-inflicted misery — the Mavericks blowing a 13-point fourth-quarter lead Game 3. Some of the humiliation was out of their control — the city of Dallas publicized a parade route after the Mavericks took a 2-0 lead.

Even the conclusion was contentious and ugly, with Mavericks fans booing during the trophy presentation.

It was a strange, tense, tumultuous championship series and, looking back, a pivotal and unique moment in recent N.B.A. history.

In an era dominated by the Lakers and the Spurs, the Mavericks were the only other Western Conference team to make the finals between 1999 and 2010. Miami’s breakthrough heralded the end of Detroit’s reign in the East, and preceded Boston’s renaissance.

James was still a year away from making his first finals appearance with the Cleveland Cavaliers, whose reign was also short-lived. Not long after Cleveland was swept in the 2007 finals by the San Antonio Spurs, Boston acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, altering the balance of power and setting in motion the events that pushed James to Miami.

A year after Cuban raged at officials — and fans cooked up conspiracy theories — an actual conspiracy involving a referee was revealed, with the arrest of Tim Donaghy.

The 2006 finals were played amid labor peace, a year removed from a new labor deal. The 2011 finals will be set against a backdrop of labor strife, and an expected lockout. The superstar alliance that Wade, James and Bosh created last summer will weigh heavily on the negotiations between the league and union officials.

In these last peaceful moments, Wade is thinking only of the legacy he began in 2006, before an unexpected half-decade pause.

“It’s only been five years,” Wade said, “but it seems way longer since we experienced this kind of success and winning. And you understand how hard it is now, especially getting back, how hard it was to win a championship. So you seize the moment, and you try to take advantage of the opportunity.”

Five years may be a relative eye-blink to the cosmos, but it is a lifetime in the N.B.A.