By Mike Fisher -- DallasBasketball.com
      The Mavs have the week’s best player in the West. And, if you hold the hyperbole up to the light just right, the Mavs have the decade’s best player in the West.
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      So naturally they continued their hot streak with a record-setting 106-93 victory at home Tuesday over the Nets.
      The numbers are sweet: An NBA record-low 11 turnovers for both teams. Just four TO’s for the Mavs, tying a franchise record and missing the league record by one. A 22-8 advantage in second-chance points. Dirk Nowitzki’s 6-of-6 from the arc. A 52-38 rebounding advantage. Four players scoring 18 or more points.
      Oh, and a fifth consecutive victory, this one over one of the elite of the East.
      “Five in a row ain’t bad,’’ said coach Don Nelson. “I think our guys are figuring out a little more about themselves. It doesn't hurt that we've had some time together now."
      Two pivotal guys: One, Michael Finley, last week’s Player of the Week in the West, who averaged 26.5 points, 6.3 rebounds and 4.0 assists as Dallas went 4-0. And two, Antoine Walker, who had 22 points, 13 rebounds, three assists, a block and no turnovers in 36 minutes. It was his fifth consecutive double-double, and the sort of performance that caused President of Utopia Donnie Nelson to utter the following phrase:
      “He,’’ Donnie said, “is our poor man's Magic Johnson."
      Yikes.
      Already, this quote has taken on a life of it’s own, and a key word has been altered in some reporting of it. Donnie didn’t say that Antoine is “A Magic,’’ he said he’s “OUR Magic.’’ Meaning he’s the best we’ve got at doing all those things, not meaning that he’s a legend in the making who will someday host a failed late-night talk show and marry a woman named Cookie.
      We tread carefully with Donnie comparisons, by the way, every since last year’s arrival of Antoine Rigadeau. It was over margaritas that we got Donnie to analyze Rig’s game by saying, “He’s a poor man’s Havlicek.’’ As we scribbled that quote into the notebook, we offered Donnie a chance to retract.
      Instead, he just re-ordered us more margs, so we went with it.
      Let’s do the same here.
      At the season’s halfway point, ‘Toine is Magic. Fin is the King. And the Mavs, the NBA’s hottest team suddenly sporting a 25-16 record, can’t lose.