A ‘sick’ joke on the media?

The video, which was released Friday morning — following the Mavericks’ 112-103 victory in Game 5 — appears to indicate that James and Wade were a little skeptical of Nowitzki’s illness.

“I just thought it was a little childish, a little ignorant,’’ Nowitzki said yesterday after practice at AmericanAirlines Arena. “I’ve been in this league for 13 years. I’ve never faked an injury or an illness before.

“But it happened. It’s over to me. It’s not going to add anything extra to me. This is the NBA Finals. If you need an extra motivation, you have a problem.

“We’re one win away from my dream, what I’ve worked on for half of my life. This is really all I’m worried about. This is all I’m focusing on. And not really off-the-court stuff that happened.’’

James and Wade took different approaches when asked about the video.

“I’m not feeding into that,’’ said James. “If you guys want to feed into everything that not only myself or D-Wade or the Miami Heat do, I think that’s a non-issue. There’s bigger issues in this series than that.’’

James has received his share of criticism for his lack of fourth-quarter production and has been on the proverbial hot seat since Miami’s Game 2 loss. He produced a triple-double in Game 5, but scored just 2 points in the fourth quarter.

So the video was actually the second topic on his docket during his interview.

Wade, meanwhile, had plenty to say, telling reporters that the entire thing was scripted because they wanted to bait the media.

“First of all, it wasn’t fake coughing,’’ said Wade, who is Miami’s leading scorer in the series. “I actually did cough. And with the cameras being right there, we made a joke out of it because we knew you guys were going to blow it up.