Spacing, Spacing, Spacing: Mavs 122, Suns 117

    Spacing, spacing, spacing.

    DONUT 2: The Suns’ offseason nightmares will be haunted by Dirk Nowitzki, who made an insane number of off-balance, fully-challenged, how’d-he-do-that? jumpers.

   “Dirk played great,’’ said friend-turned-for Steve Nash. “He was unstoppable.’’

   The UberMan (joining Jason Terry in taking full responsibility for the Dallas scoring load) started slow … but kept firing. By halftime he had 11. In the third quarter he scored 15 and took Matt Barnes to school. In the fourth quarter, when the Mavs were in the half-court, they introduced a semi-new offensive set that dumps the ball to Dirk at the free-throw line, clears out for him, and gives him a couple of new passing options. …

    Thing is, he never much passed out of the “free-throw-line iso.’’ He just kept making insane off-balance shots, and finished with 34 points (to go with his 13 rebounds, four assists and two blocks) and the Mavs have a new bread-and-butter set.

     “We actually officially put in a name for that play yesterday and really cleaned up some the stuff involved with the spacing,’’ coach Rick Carlisle said. “It was timely (to have done so) because it was one area that he was able to manufacture some shots.’’

    Dallas decided against putting Dirk lower in the blocks because that would draw double-teams. His coaching staff believed that Phoenix would effectively switch to control Dirk on the pick-and-roll, so the Mavs didn’t rely on that. Instead, they went with a new play. … really, a refined play. … and went to it repeatedly down the stretch.

    “Dirk was phenomenal,’’ Carlisle said.

   DONUT 3: A road win! Against a West team! Against a contender!

   I could get used to this.

   The Mavs' last road victory anywhere was Feb. 2 at Orlando. Dallas snapped a string of nine straight road losses against Western Conference foes, dating back to a Christmas night visit to Portland.

   Ah, Portland.

   The media focus will immediately switch, I bet, to “let’s see them do it again tonight in Portland’’ mode, and I understand that. Yeah, sure, let’s see them do it again. But this is the second night of a b-2-b, against a team in the same playoff fight that Dallas finds itself in. … Portland is supposed to win this game tonight.

   Here’s the unvarnished, unemotional truth: The Phoenix win sort of permits Dallas to lose tonight. Dallas really needs to survive this week’s roadie (at Phx, at Port, at GS, at LAL) and winning two of the four constitutes “survival.’’ Anything more than that would be gravy. … and anything more than that would be, frankly, surprising.

   But go ahead. Surprise me. I could get used to that, too.

    DONUT 4: Props to Carlisle for starting JJ Barea – a pretty ballsy move but a rather retrospectively sensible one, given the head-to-head skill duel with Steve Nash. (I know. It sounds odd. JJB matches up OK with a two-time MVP? But it is so.) And props to JJB for fulfilling the coach’s dream by scoring 14 points in the first half, thus helping the Mavs endure the Suns’ Nash-led charge.

   Nash ended with 23 and 13, and JJB only scored two more points in the game. But even if this was only a Band-Aid – a Band-Aid for one game, against one guy, that won’t work again, that will leave the Mavs exposed at the 2 with Josh Howard out – at this moment, a temporary Band-Aid is better than a loss.

   DONUT 5: This isn’t an original thought. But it is original in that I’m going to say it without snark and without attitude: The Mavs scored 122 without Josh Howard.

   There is an X-and-O’sy explanation, I think: The offensive pecking order gets a bit jumbled when J-Ho is in his “hunting-for-shots’’ mood. Without him – not that it’s ever “better,’’ exactly – but without him, the totem pole is clearer, the roles are more defined and the spacing … yes, that word again. … was textbook stuff.

   DONUT 6: We’ve pretty much established that this Mavs win puts the Suns out of their ninth-place misery. Dallas is up five with 18 to play and that’s kind of a “non-mathematical clinch,’’ if you will. But just to make it more mathematically official:

   For Dallas to not make the playoffs, the Mavs (a 39-25 team) would have to play .500 ball down the stretch, going 9-9 to finish with just 48 wins. Meanwhile, the Suns would have to go 14-4 to match that.

   “One of the themes in the Mavs’ locker room – created by Carlisle and Nowitzki and echoed now elsewhere – is the “we want to look up in the standings and not down’’ thing.

   Looking up: The Mavs are just a half-game behind seventh-place Denver. And they are a game behind New Orleans. And they are 1.5 games behind Portland for the fifth through seventh playoff spots in the West.

   Yes, Portland.

   “Make no mistake,’’ Carlisle said. “We’re trying to move up. We’re not just trying to hang in this thing. We’re trying to move up in the seeding.”

   Back down: "This wasn't the difference in us being in the playoffs and not," Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry fibbed. "It's a tough loss, and this is obviously the team that we're chasing. But they have a tough schedule, and we've got a lot of games that we can win."

   Looking at it realistically: "We've got 18 games left, and we've got to damn near win 'em all, and see what happens," Shaquille O'Neal said.

   DONUT 7: I didn’t think there was anything especially wrong with the Suns’ effort, did you? (Except for their weird 17-second layback to end the game). Stevie Nash disagrees.

    "We came out, I thought, in the first half and were decent and had a lot of room for improvement, and came out really flat in the second half and I can't explain why," Nash said. "I felt that our (play) in the second half wasn't nearly up to where it could have been; with very little concentration we could have improved a lot. I thought we would have had a little more fire in the second half."

   Again, I thought Phoenix had fire. But when they rely on way-outshooting you. … and then they shoot 55 percent and you shoot 53 percent and then on top of that you dominate them on the boards, 46-36. … well, their fire gets doused.

   DONUT 8: Let me touch on something again: The Mavs outrebounded The Big Cactus’ team 46-36. Wow. O'Neal scored 21 on 9-of-10 shooting for Phoenix to pass Elvin Hayes for sixth on the NBA's career scoring list, and he had nine rebounds. So he was good. But he wasn’t good enough to stay on the floor late, he wasn’t good enough to embarrass Dallas’ center combo of Damp and Hollins, and he wasn’t good enough to keep Phoenix alive on the glass.

   DONUT 9: I personally believe my radio appearances on ESPN 103.3 represent a Mavs’ lucky charm. So let’s do it again!

    DallasBasketball.com will represent by joining Wally Lynn at 7:25 Wednesday for “Mavs Insider’’ before the 9 p.m. Mavs-at-Blazers tipoff. Listen live and Catch the Fish, Wednesday night, on ESPN!

   DONUT 10: Bob Ortegel and the rest of the Mavs’ telecast crew talked in their prep meetings about Dirk and Jet needing to combine for 45 points for the Dallas offense to be effective. I believe I upped the number to 50 for this game, based on the thinking that this figured to be a game in which both teams scored more than 110 points.

     They combined for 59.

   That’s not to dismiss the “little-things’’ contributions made by supporting-cast members. Antoine Wright’s 12 points. Brandon Bass’s 10 points. And the shocker, Ryan Hollins being asked to wrassle with Shaq, giving Dallas 13 good minutes and jumping-jack sparks on both ends.

   But when Jet said he and Dirk might have to each take 20 to 25 shots, he wasn’t exaggerating. And when I say they’re going to have to make at least half of those shots, I’m not exaggerating, either.

   DONUT 11: I wrote this twice in the days leading up to the game and I mentioned it twice on ESPN:

   A killer-instinct test: If Dallas beats Phoenix on Tuesday, the Mavs will be up five with 18 left. The Mavs can kill the Suns, twist the knife, waterboard the body and then chop it into pieces before burying those pieces.

   Can we say it now? If not out-loud, then at least in a whisper to one another?

   Yes, the Mavs have killer instinct. It’s in there. Somewhere.

   DONUT 12: Jason Kidd’s boxscore-busying line, revealed: 12 points (on 4-of-8 shooting, all eight from the arc) three assists, eight rebounds, four steals. Jason Kidd’s Personal Killer Instinct, revealed: In the 44^th minute of the game, the ball rotated back to him – more spacing – and he took the challenge, nailing a 3 and on the next possession nailing another 3 to make it 112-99 with 3:08 to play.

    “Dirk was going great,’’ Kidd said, “so I had to be ready to knock down a shot to take some pressure off him. He became the playmaker and he found me twice.’’

    How did the Mavs make those shots happen? How did they get Dirk loose? What is the standings-related result of the Mavs’ 122-117 win at Phoenix?

    Spacing, spacing, spacing.

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935am mar 11 2009