NEW ORLEANS – For all the talk about what the Mavericks have to do to stop Chris Paul, there’s also another side to that coin. Don’t stop yourselves.

The second half of Game 1 was a clinic of what not to do. Ball movement trickled to a standstill resulting in contested shots launched to beat the shot clock. The Hornets and Paul happily capitalized.

“Whatever changes we need to make, we need the ball to go in the basket more than 33 percent of the time,” Avery Johnson said Monday. “If the ball can go in the basket more than 33 percent of the time and we can get back to our normal offensive production, then we think that will help our defense.”

The offense starts with Jason Kidd, but the point guard and Dirk Nowitzki aren’t solely responsible for producing baskets. Josh Howard needs to remain in attack mode, especially when his jumper isn’t falling. Jason Terry and Jerry Stackhouse could also loosen the defense up, and some of the double teams against Nowitzki.

“We’ve got to get everybody touching the ball, swinging it,” Kidd. “It got a little sticky there where we were holding it and then when we were passing it with four seconds left on the shot clock and somebody had to take a jump shot.”

The numbers from the final two quarters of the opener read like a horror story. The Mavs shot 25 percent (9 of 36), had one bucket in the paint, turned it over nine times and scored just 40. 

“We’ve got to keep doing what we were doing in the first half, more consistent for a longer period of time,” said Nowitzki, who scored 31. “The second half there were a lot of breakdowns there and offensively we couldn’t get going.”

Reversing those trends is the surest way to wrestle away the homecourt edge Tuesday night in Game 2 at New Orleans Arena.

Coming to Dirk’s aide

The double-technical against Dirk Nowitzki and David West generated quite a bit of scrutiny. The penalty was assessed after the two power forwards got tangled up late in the fourth quarter – Nowitzki split West’s lip followed by West tapping his hand on Nowitzki’s face a couple of times.

“It’s a cop-out call,” Nowitzki said. “If two guys get into each other, it’s always a double-technical. That’s the nature of the league. The league tries to take all the physical plays and confrontations out of it.”

Nowitzki didn’t retaliate because he thought only West would get a ‘T.’ Tyson Chandler picked up a technical for shoving Nowitzki to the court in the third quarter.

“We need players to not back down from anybody,” Johnson said. “That’s what the playoffs are all about. More than Dirk doing something about it, I would have liked for somebody else on the team, preferably in the center position, to do something about it.”

Did he mean Erick Dampier or Brandon Bass? Dampier wasn’t in the game during the altercation. Bass was. Johnson: “Was that clear enough?” Who knows?

Ending the road drought

The playoff losing streak on the road has reached seven for the Mavs. The last win – Game 6 of the 2006 Western Conference finals at Phoenix – clinched the NBA Finals trip. Since then, they’ve lost three at Miami, three at Golden State and the opener of this series.

“We’re confident we can win on the road,” Dirk Nowitzki said. “We just have to go out and do it. Obviously, the team that loses always has to go back and look at some stuff and adjust, and they’re probably ready for our adjustments.

“The playoffs are a game of adjustments. Hopefully, this is still going to be a long series. We still have a chance to get that split there. We’ve just got to get Game 2.”

They won’t advance without at least one win in New Orleans. Avery Johnson doesn’t put much stock in the streak, noting those previous six losses were without Jason Kidd.

“This team is 0-1 on the road and that’s the way we’re looking at it,” Johnson said. “We’ll try to even it up on Tuesday.”

The ring is the thing

Avery Johnson showed up for his afternoon press briefly in the lobby of the team hotel wearing his 1999 NBA Championship ring won in San Antonio on his right hand. It’s hardly a subtle message.

Johnson won’t be flashing the bling alone in Game 2. The entire coaching staff is doing the same. Assistant coaches Paul Westphal, Joe Prunty and Mario Elie have also been part of championship teams. Westphal (Boston) and Elie (Houston and San Antonio) won titles as players, while Prunty (San Antonio) won several as an assistant.

Devean George and Tyronn Lue also own rings, having won multiple titles with the Lakers. Don’t count on those rings coming out of storage for the pregame layup line.

The CP3 Rules

The coaching staff didn’t invent a new defense to control Chris Paul during the break between Game 1 and 2. It’s just a matter of following the gameplan and constantly applying pressure on the MVP candidate.

“We have a couple of ideas,” Avery Johnson said. “Whatever we do, we have to do it effectively and efficiently. He’s a heck of a player. He’s been doing it to everybody all year. We have some ideas. We’re not going to give away our scouting report, but we have to make him work on both ends.”

Considering his quickness and ability to create, team defense becomes more critical against Paul. He spent most of the second half of Game 1 operating in the paint.

“You’d like to get more help involved, but it’s not as easy,” Jason Kidd said. “He’s a very talented player, he’s seen it all, he understands the different defenses that are thrown at him, so in that second half he took advantage of the pick-and-roll and carried his team to victory.”

Jet third in Sixth Man voting

Jason Terry placed third in voting for the NBA Sixth Man Award, the league announced Monday. Manu Ginobili of the San Antonio Spurs won the honor as the league’s best player in a reserve role.

Ginobili received 615 out of a possible 620 points, including 123 of a possible 124 first-place votes, from a panel of 124 sportswriters and broadcasters throughout the United States and Canada. Leandro Barbosa of the Phoenix Suns finished second with 283 points and Terry placed third with 44 points.