Mavs Win 10th Straight

The Mavs have achieved their second double digit winning streak of the season.  A feat only matched by the San Antonio Spurs at this point in the season.  Tonight matched a veteran Mavericks team with a very young Sacramento team.  The difference was extremely obvious in the starting lineups, with the Kings most veteran player, Beno Udrih, in his 7th year while the Mavs youngest starter, Tyson Chandler, is in his 10th year.  The total years of NBA experience for Sacramento is only 15 years compared to the Mavericks' staggering 55 years.


The game started with two scoreless minutes before Tyson Chandler (13 points) finally hit a jumper to get things started.  From there the teams basically traded baskets for the next 8 minutes before the Kings finished the quarter outscoring the Mavs 8-1 for a 28-20 lead.  The Mavs controlled the paint with Chandler scoring 6 points and then subbing out for Haywood who dropped in 7 in the quarter, but Tyreke Evans (16 points) caused the Mavs all kinds of trouble scoring 8 points and dishing out 5 assist.

Tyreke Evans and Demarcus Cousins

With 8:49 left in the 2nd quarter Dirk Nowitzki finally scored his first points of the game and Jason Terry joined him on the next trip down the floor.  Terry kept scoring and the Mavs pulled even with just over 3 minutes left in the half at 43-43.  Terry would end up scoring 12 points in the quarter as the Mavs wrapped things up with two 3-pointers from Jason Kidd (14 points) and another from Brian Cardinal (3 points).  A 13-4 scoring advantage for the Mavericks took the score at half to 56-47 in their favor.  A 9 point lead with hardly any contribution from Dirk who ended the half with just 3 points.

Dirk (10 points) got things go a little bit with 7 points in the 3rd quarter, but Demarcus Cousins bullied his way to 12 points in the same span, lowering his shoulder and forcing his way to the rim.  Heading into the 4th quarter the lead was down to just one point, 74-73.

JJ Barea

In the 4th quarter the Mavs continued to struggle with the battering ram style of Cousins (19 points), as well as the similar style play from Samuel Dalembert (20 points), who scored 12 points in the quarter.  Barea came through big in the 4th with a number of nice finishes inside, outpacing Dalembert with 15 points of his own.  Two free throws from Dalembert gave the Kings the lead 95-94 with 2:29 left, but back-to-back 3's from JET (22 points) and JJ Barea (20 points) pushed the Mavs back in front 100-95 with 1:31 remaining.  Three free throws from cousins and Evans cut the lead to 2 points before the officials made a very questionable double technical call that resulted in Cousins ejection because he had received a tech earlier in the quarter on an out-of-bounds call that ended up being overturned.  Terry made the final Mavs' points of the game from the line and put the game out of reach before a meaningless Sacramento layup pushed the final score to102-100.