Recap: Nets 93 at Mavericks 92

Recap: Nets 93 at Mavericks 92

Earl K. Sneed recaps the Dallas Mavericks' one-point home loss to the New Jersey Nets Tuesday night as the defending champions began a stretch of nine games in 12 days.

DALLAS — It isn’t the ideal way to begin play after the All-Star break, but Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle is looking at his team’s nine games in a 12-day stretch as positively as possible.

Before taking the court Tuesday night against the New Jersey Nets to begin the tough stretch, Carlisle looked at the bright side — or looked for the bright side — as his team returned from five days of rest. And with the squad set to touch down in seven cities during the upcoming span, Carlisle emphasized a positive outlook to his team.

“It’s something new. It’s a different type of challenge,” Carlisle said. “We’ll never go through this again unless we get some weird lockout season somewhere down the line. … I find the peculiar challenges of this season to be engaging and great opportunities. We’re going through different things that we’ve never gone through before, and we’re gonna learn things from this that are gonna help us when we get back to an 82-game season.”

With their coach’s encouraging words, the Mavericks then began post-break play by looking to start the gauntlet of games with a victory. The organization also honored former swingman DeShawn Stevenson before the game with a championship ring ceremony prior to facing off against ex-head coach Avery Johnson and The Colony native Deron Williams. But with the Nets (11-25) invading the American Airlines Center and leaving with a 93-92 victory, it wouldn’t take long for both Carlisle and his team’s positive feelings to turn negative after a last-second defeat.

“It was not what you want coming out of the break at home,” 11-time All-Star Dirk Nowitzki said after the loss. “We were sloppy. Ball-handling, shooting, everything was sloppy. … We gave ourselves a chance, but we just weren’t good enough.”

After a standing ovation from the Dallas faithful during a video tribute to Stevenson, the Mavericks (21-14) got back to work while leaning on Nowitzki in the opening quarter. But the Nets countered by going to their own All-Star as Williams engineered his team to an early advantage. And with Williams tallying 10 points, four assists and two rebounds in the period, the Mavericks faced a 28-23 deficit after the first 12 minutes of play.

“Look, we didn’t shoot well. We shot 36 percent and that’s not a very good number. The focus is at the end of the game, but I thought our beginning of the game was poor. We weren’t engaged defensively, we allowed them to shoot 52 percent (in the first quarter) and get a five-point lead. We had some turnovers that led to fast breaks and they had a bunch of fast-break points in the first half,” Carlisle explained.

Returning from a five-game absence due to a personal issue, the Mavericks got a lift from backup point guard Rodrigue Beaubois early in the second period at the offensive end of the floor. But with Brook Lopez exploding for 13 straight Nets points, the visiting squad continued to keep a safe separation on the scoreboard. Lopez then dunked in his 20th and 21st points of the night before Anthony Morrow beat the halftime buzzer with a 3-pointer, lifting the Nets to a 56-45 lead at the midway mark.

With Lopez surpassing his previous season-high of 15 points in the first half and hitting 10-of-15 from the field, the Nets outshot the Mavs through two quarters, 50 percent to 36.4 percent. Behind their 7-footer inside, the Nets also held a 24-16 advantage in points in the paint in addition to a 21-5 margin in fast-break points as the two teams battled to a 25-all stalemate in the rebounding department.

The third period would get worse before it got better for the Mavs as the Nets jumped out to a lead as large as 13. But with center Brendan Haywood asserting himself inside and Nowitzki draining a shot from behind the 3-point arc, the Mavs rallied with a 15-2 run, eventually tying the game for the first time before reserve guard Jason Terry’s timely 3-pointer over former teammate Gerald Green gave the Mavs their first lead of the night, 71-69, and moved him ahead of Dale Ellis (1,719) for sixth on the NBA’s all-time list.

Green and Morrow would bring their team back with perimeter shooting of their own, however, as the Nets entered the fourth with a 79-76 edge.

The Mavs would go cold in the final period, though, as the offense struggled to produce points. Meanwhile, the Nets used an 11-2 run to once again widen the gap as the Mavs started the quarter by missing their first 14 shots.

“It was kind of a reflection of the whole game. I mean, we were off and couldn’t make a shot. It was ugly,” Nowitzki simply said.

Haywood then kept the Mavs’ hearts beating, scoring the team’s first made field goal in the period with 3:25 remaining as Dallas faced an 89-83 deficit.

“It’s the full 48 minutes. We did a great job coming back at the end, but it’s hard to get into a situation where there’s zero margin for error. You put it all on a three-minute stretch when you’ve got 45 other minutes to play a consistent, solid game. We just didn’t do it for 48 and that’s the biggest thing,” Carlisle explained.

But using a 13-2 run led by Nowitzki and Shawn Marion, the Mavs climbed back within two before point guard Jason Kidd gave his team a 92-91 edge with a 3-pointer as just 48.9 seconds remained on the game clock. As he did all night, however, Lopez rose to the occasion, connecting on two free throws to put his team ahead one with 42.4 ticks left.

“Coming off the break, it looked like the first game of the season. Nothing was going our way and we came out after halftime and had a chance to take the lead. … It was our game to have and we couldn’t get it done down the stretch,” Kidd said.

The Mavs’ comeback effort would then stumble when Kidd’s three attempt just slightly touched the rim before Sundiata Gaines grabbed the board and called timeout with 23.7 left. The Dallas defense did its part, though, as Terry forced a steal out of Morrow’s hands to give the Mavs the ball with 17.9 seconds left to answer. But as was the case last season for the eventual champs, a scoreless Stevenson’s perimeter defense would prove to be too much, forcing a miss by Kidd as time expired after the Nets forced the ball out of Nowitzki’s hands while sending the Mavs off their home floor on the downside of a one-point loss.

“We were trying to get the ball to Dirk,” Kidd said of the sequence. “We felt that they were going to come off of him and we just had to be ready to shoot. I should have shot the first ball that they gave me, I had a wide-open look and I was trying to keep the last shot so we could run the clock down. D-Steve got his hands on that pump fake and once I lost focus, not focus but the pass, I had to heave one up. We had some great looks. That’s the game of basketball, sometimes they go in and sometimes they don’t. Tonight our shots didn’t fall for us in that fourth quarter.”

“The last two plays of the game, those are on me. I take full responsibility for those,” Carlisle added. “If I’m going to get on them when they’re not doing things the right way during the game then I’ve got to be willing to take the blame for critical plays at the end of the game. This is going to be an emotional stretch of games. There’s going to be a lot going on, there’s going to be a lot of hungry teams that don’t necessarily have good records. Similar to tonight, if we don’t put our best game forward, we put ourselves in harm’s way.”

Lopez finished with a season-high 38 points leading four Nets in double figures. Meanwhile, after his hot start, Williams missed his last 10 shots before finishing with 12 points on 3-of-15 shooting to go with 12 assists. Nowitzki led the Mavs with a team-high 24 points and matched Haywood’s 10 rebounds as the big man recorded his second double-double with a season-high 18 points. Terry added 12 points off the bench while Beaubois and Marion pitched in 11 points.

Led by Kris Humphries’ game-high 15 rebounds, the Nets finished with a 53-49 advantage on the glass while outshooting the Mavs, 44 percent to 36 percent. The Nets also totaled a 42-36 advantage in points in the paint and a 25-13 margin in fast-break points. And not even Dallas’ 21 points off 19 New Jersey turnovers would be enough to avoid the defeat as the Mavs surrendered 17 points off their own 13 giveaways.

The Mavericks will now try to bounce back just 24 hours later, returning to action on the second night of a back-to-back in Memphis Wednesday in a showdown against the Southwest Division rival Grizzlies. That game will begin a two-game road trip and will air locally at 7 p.m. CT on Fox Sports Southwest.

“We didn’t want to start off the second half this way, but we’ve got to play in Memphis,” Kidd said while looking ahead. “They play extremely hard and we’ve got to be ready to play. This game, we can’t do anything about it now, just be ready to move on.”

The team returns to the American Airlines Center Saturday night for a third showdown against the Utah Jazz. Dallas leads the season series 2-0. The game will air locally on Fox Sports Southwest at 7:30 p.m. CT. Tickets are still available and can be purchased by calling (214) 747-MAVS.

Single-game tickets are on sale and available at the American Airlines Center North Box Office, online at mavs.com, via phone by calling 214-747-MAVS or 1-800-4NBA-TIX and all Ticketmaster outlets (Fiesta Grocery Stores, Wal-Mart, Simon Mall in Garland and the Shops at Willow Bend in Plano).