Last night's game pretty much went according to plan (box score - highlights).  I'm not sure what it was exactly, but late in the first quarter with Dallas up 21-18 I felt pretty sure that Dallas wasn't going to trail the rest of the game.   The Kings, without Kevin Martin, shouldn't score 80+ against Dallas, and they didn't so job well done.

There was a disappointing element to the game though, and that's how boring it was.  Remember when Dallas/Sacramento meant something?  That was a fun rivalry.  Now Dallas is winning by 20+ without trying, the crowd is quiet, and the arena isn't exactly full.  Oh well, I know Dallas will eventually go through the same phase that the Kings are currently in, but for now I'm glad it's them and not us that has faded away.

Mike Fisher points out how easy it was for Dallas.

How easy was it for the Mavs to handle the Kings? Even Devean George played well.

....What, exactly, did LA-lovin' Devean do to earn such praise? He played even with Kings emergency go-to-guy John Salmons.

Yup. John Salmons is their go-to-guy.

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Rick Carisle's play of the game:

Dirk Nowitzki punched the ball away from guard John Salmons, beat him down the court then hurled himself to the floor to flip the ball back to Devean George for a layup.

"That was a defining play in this game," Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. "That was an effort play, where you got a max player going down on the floor.

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Hubbard says the Mavs still aren't where they need to be but have improved dramatically.

The two victories over winning teams came in San Antonio and Houston. But each team was missing a major player. The Spurs were without Manu Ginobili and the Rockets played without Yao Ming.

Still, despite no quality wins against teams at full strength, the Mavericks are playing better than the team that lost a game to the Los Angeles Clippers.

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Carlisle with a Josh Howard update.

"I'm hopeful. I'd like to say that I'm optimistic, but really it's up to Mother Nature at this point. I know that he's doing everything he can do in terms of treatment to try and condition the ankle as it progresses. But I don't have a crystal ball right now. Obviously the sooner the better for us."

And Jason Terry is not one of the people who think Dallas playing well without Howard means anything.

"I mean, we're still not all the way put together. J-Ho [Josh Howard] is out. He's a big part of what we do. I mean, how can we even judge where we're at when you don't have your All-Star out there with you?

"I'm not using that as an excuse. It is what it is. We're doing a decent job of banding together. It says a lot about this team. It says we're playing hard."

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Discuss the game here.

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Hubbard has some quotes from Carlise about how well Jason Terry has been playing off of the bench.

"He’s been able to give us a real scoring punch off the bench," Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. "The great thing about him is he’s willing to do whatever to try and win. If I have him coming off the bench we can keep his minutes reasonable and still get a real weapon coming off the bench. And it’s great for the soul of our team to have a guy who’s that unselfish when it comes to that kind of stuff."

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Jerry Stackhouse didn't travel to CA with the team after having surgery on his foot.

"It requires a short period of complete inactivity," Stackhouse said by text-message Friday night. "I hope to be moving again early in the week."

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Anyone know what Reyshawn Terry is up to?  As far as I can tell, he still isn't playing basketball anywhere.

• Gerald Green scored the first and last points of the game.
• Devean George and Antoine Wright got the Kobe assignment.  Wright definitely seemed to a better job.  The +/-, George -17 and Wright +12, surely the difference wasn't that great right?
• Dallas shot 29 3's.  Most of them were good shots and they made 45% which is fantastic, but that's uncomfortably high...
• How good was Barea tonight?  10 points, 9assists in 20 minutes.  I made note of this in the game thread, but it was like one of his D-League games.
• Rick Carlisle's postgame quotes:

"Well, there's a huge rebound differential and if you look at the free throw line there's a big difference there.  Umm, you know the Lakers are one of those teams that statistically when they don't look like they're playing they can still find ways to beat you.  Are undoing was the second half of the third quarter -- When they went on a run and we just didn't have any answers.  We hung in and gave ourselves a chance, but you know Kobe made some very difficult shots down the stretch and I thought Ariza was probably the major difference in the game.  The things he did offensively and defensively were difference makers. 

Our bench did good things.  We expect them to play well.  That's their job.  We need that every night.  Barea did some really good things for us from a playmaking standpoint.  And we had some other guys play well durng stretches.  But that six or seven minuter period, late third early fourth, was our undoing.

I can't remember the last time I saw an NBA team only commit 8 fouls in 48 minutes, but maybe these guys are that good defensively.  It's a little hard to believe, but I'm not going to complain about the officiating, but I thought we played an aggressive game and we could have gone to the line a few more times.

With the Dallas Mavericks you're not interested in moral victories.  We're interested in winning games. We had an opportunity and let it slip away.  Give the Lakers credit.  They did what they had to do to take the game away.  We're very disappointed, but now we've got to regroup for tomorrow night."

Box Score - AP Recap - Game Flow

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So Far This Season:
LAL 106 @ 99 DAL

Discuss the game here.

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Still no word if Josh Howard will play tonight, but he did shoot around with the the team today.  I'm guessing he plays but we'll see...

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Dirk credits the five game winning streak to everyone just being more comfortable.

"I think it's just a comfort level with what we're doing," Dirk Nowitzki says. "That's really it. We didn't really know what to run, what we were comfortable with in the first couple games.

"Now, we know what to do out there a little more. When you're comfortable on the court, it shows. We're able to put ourselves in position where we can make plays and make shots."

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Rick Carlisle on the Lakers.

"They've been dominant," Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. "Look at their statistics and they appear to have no weakness. They've got length, and they play both ends of the floor. We have a very low margin for error offensively and defensively against them because they're the best right now."

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Jason Kidd bought everyone customized headphones.

Think they're cool and want a pair of your own?  You can buy them here -- only $1,100.00.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Sefko has an article on Diop trying to raise his intensity the last few games.

Caplan writes about Antoine Wright.

"I think he's earned the right to start the next game," Carlisle said Wednesday, a day off before today's Thanksgiving practice and flight to LA. "It's just what position he's going to be playing."

And JFE comes to the defense of Jerry Stackhouse.  She starts the article off by saying she's friends with him because he was always on her radio, and then I just sort of skimmed the rest.

Art has an article up on NBA.com about Stackhouse wantintg to get traded to a team where he can get minutes.  There's nothing groundbreaking in there, but he does have some quotes from Stackhouse that I haven't seen anywhere else so I figured I'd post it.  He also speculates that Toronto, Atlanta, and Philly are teams that could be interested.

Sefko recaps the game saying Dallas is having some breaks go their way during the five game winning streaks, and Caplan focuses his recap on Antoine Wright.

Wright who notched a season-high 12 points in the second quarter, had several of those on Tuesday, and he also attacked the rim and scored rather than loft 3-pointers.

"About the only time he didn't finish," Carlisle said, "was when it looked like he was tired. ...We couldn't have won this game without Antoine's overall effort at both ends. He really kept himself ready."

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Caplan has a Josh Howard update.

"It's a lot better, but still day-to-day," Howard said. "I'm very eager. I've just got to get my foot together first and make sure I come back at full strength."

Howard said the injury restricts his ability to cut, which is a significant part of his game.

"An athletic guy like myself, I want to be able to play the game the way I can," Howard said. "As soon as I get that range of motion back, I'll be good."

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Mike Fisher has his game observations.

Lost in all the late-game heroics will be Erick Dampier's clever decision to absorb a charge rather than attempt to block a driving layup by Danny Granger.

Erick Dampier drew a game-changing charge. Then came a solar eclipse. And then Hell froze over.

Antoine Wright:

On suddenly playing 40 minutes.

Exhuasting.  Coach has stuck with me and told me to just continue to work and my chance would come.

Carlisle has said nobody has grabbed the SG spot by the horns....

Whatever happens at that two position, guys just have to come in ready, focused, and know what the game plan is.

How does it feel to be back to .500?

It feels good to be .500, but now we have the Lakers.

It was your sons 4th birthday and you had a career night scoring 24 in 40 minutes.  Do you think he brought you good luck?

I don't know if it's good for me because now he's going to be so excited and I'm tired.

Rick Carlisle:

We were getting stops and rebounds [late] which was a big problem early in the game.  Then Terry and Kidd made play after play.  JET got to the basket - he hit jumpers.  Kidd hit two huge threes.  Our veterans willed us to a win - is what happened.  You've got to give credit to them.

Antoine Wright played tremendously well. As much as this looks like an iny-miny-miny-moe game with the two guard spot, there's logic to it just in regard to the defensive matchups coming into the game.  We had a lot of respect for Marquis Daniels and felt he would be the best guy to guard him. He had a great defensive and offensive game. Very happy for him.

We really needed to get this win somehow.  We were having a lot of diffculty early.  We gave up 13 offensive rebounds in the first half -- I think 8 in the first six and a half minutes which is unheard of. We'd become a better rebouding team, but they were long rebounds and Indiana was just quicker to the ball.

The second half we talked about getting the tempo reasonable for us and working the game back and staying with it. That's what our guys did. We were hoping to cut into the lead a little bit earlier than the last few minutes of the fourth, but whatever you can to do to get a win in this situation, when you're trying to get back to .500, is whatever you have to do.

They're not all Rembrandts.

Box Score - AP Recap