Dallas Mavericks 89 at Minnesota Timberwolves 77
With the announcement coming earlier in the day that swingman Josh Howard would be out indefinitely as he returns to rehabbing from his surgically-repaired left ankle, the Dallas Mavericks came into Minnesota hoping to get back on the winning track against a short-handed Timberwolves squad.
As they had the previous 12 times the two teams met, Dallas came away with another notch in the win column, moving their winning streak against Minnesota to 13 (tied for the longest streak in the NBA) with a scrappy 89-77 win. In a physical and emotional affair, the Mavericks kept their heads as tempers flared and moved to 6-3 on the season.
"I liked our defense, we did a nice job defensively and I know they are missing some key guys but in terms of coverage and execution we did a solid job," Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said after the win. "They are a team you can't look past because they have a lot of 3-point shooters and the point guard situation is strong with (Jonny Flynn) and (Ramon Sessions) and you have to play, play to beat them. It's a good win."
"Road wins in the NBA are not easy to come by, so we'll take it."
But the Mavs had to work hard to claim a victory on the road against the 1-9 Wolves.
"They are a feisty, young team that goes out there and plays hard," forward Shawn Marion said. "We just got to look at it like that."
(Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)
Rookie Rodrigue Beaubois got the start in place of Howard
As Howard began to sit out for Dallas, and with Al Jefferson (family death) away from the Timberwolves while Kevin Love (broken left hand) continues to watch from the sidelines in street clothes, it was clear early that neither team was at full strength. Carlisle inserted rookie Rodrigue Beaubois into the starting lineup in Howard's stead, playing next to Jason Kidd, Marion, Dirk Nowitzki and Erick Dampier.
As he did in his first start of the season against the New Orleans Hornets, Beaubois opened the scoring by turning a lob pass into an easy deuce off the feed of Kidd. Seemingly like deja vu, the rookie went on to score the first seven Dallas points, as the Mavs jumped out to an early 7-2 lead.
Once the rookie picked up his second foul early and the Timberwolves battled back to take a brief lead, Dallas replaced Beaubois with sixth man Jason Terry while Drew Gooden entered for Dampier. Behind Terry and Gooden, the Mavericks' second unit closed the opening quarter tied at 22-all.
As they have throughout the early stage of the season, Dallas struggled shooting in the first quarter (9-of-23) but used six Minnesota turnovers to stay in the game.
In the second quarter, the Mavs had a tough time defending forward Nathan Jawai in the paint. Jawai, who was on the Dallas preseason roster before being traded, began to show the promise that the Mavs' coaching staff saw this exhibition season but both teams continued to stay evenly matched, tied at 29-all midway through the second quarter.
In a sloppy quarter, Dallas emerged as the front-runner after outscoring Minnesota 22-11 behind defensive rebounding and transition offense to take a 44-33 advantage into the halftime break. Neither team scorched the nets in the first half, as Dallas shot 39 percent while Minnesota hit on just under 33 percent of their shots in the first 24 minutes of play. Marion's 10 first half points, on 4-of-7 from the field, led all scorers at the half.
"We got some stops, in that first half we couldn't make a shot or finish a play," Kidd said. "So we got some defense. We've been talking about it all season and at the beginning of Training Camp, we've got to play good team defense if we want to be one of those elite teams."
(Photo by David Sherman/NBAE via Getty Images)
Dallas began the second half with the game's starters, as the rookie Beaubois continued to get the minutes. Playing fast at both ends, pushing the tempo on offense and defensively collecting timely deflections and a block on Corey Brewer's dunk attempt, Beaubois showed he belonged on the court. The game got testy in the third, with Nowitzki and former Mav Ryan Hollins receiving a double-technical foul call in a scrum before Minnesota coach Kurt Rambis also drew a technical for arguing a call.
The two teams continued to bring out each other's ugly side with confrontational play when Gooden committed a hard foul on Hollins, leading the Minnesota center to be ejected after throwing an elbow Gooden's way. Hollins picked up his second technical in a three-minute span in the altercation.
"It's part of the game, those couple altercations that happened, its just part of the game," Marion said. "Nobody did it intentionally or anything -- it's just the heat of the moment. It's a battle out there on that floor."
"They're a young feisty team just trying to get a win, there's nothing wrong with that and you have to give them credit for that. I won't take that away from them at all."
Meanwhile, the fiery play did little to change the results on the scoreboard as Dallas remained poised and continued to hold a double-digit lead after Terry's steal and breakaway layup gave the Mavs a 60-47 advantage with 3:48 left in the third quarter. The lead then ballooned to 18 just two minutes later, as Nowitzki began to heat up, nailing a 3-pointer off of Terry's feed. Nowitzki poured in 15 points in the period, doing much of his work after the double-technical to take Dallas up 73-54 heading into the final quarter.
"He (Nowitzki) had been struggling and I was considering getting him out and getting him back in, but then he hit a shot so we rolled with him and then he got it going and hit three or four which were big, so that was a key stretch," Carlisle said of Nowitzki's third quarter.
"Dirk is one of the best in the league and he got motivated," Kidd said. "You can see that once he got going, he's tough to stop."
Dallas led by as many as 23 in the fourth behind the above-the-rim play of reserve forward Kris Humphries, as the Mavericks began to put the game away early in the fourth. With Humphries and J.J. Barea leading the way, the Maverick reserves closed out Dallas' sixth win of the season despite Minnesota outscoring Dallas 23-16 in the fourth quarter. The Maverick bench saw most of the time in the fourth.
"We always use it (the second unit), not this much but our second unit is one of the top two or three in the league in scoring, so its not that unusual that they played," Carlisle said.
Nowitzki finished with a game-high 20 points (on 8-of-15 shooting) and 11 rebounds in just 28 minutes. Marion added 15 points, while Terry led the Dallas bench with 12 points of his own.
The rookie Flynn led Minnesota with 11 points.
Despite shooting just 40 percent in the win, Dallas' defense suffocated Minnesota into 33 percent shooting. Dallas also won the rebounding edge 57-51. The Mavs did struggle handling the ball, overcoming 17 turnovers mainly with defensive intensity that translated into 12 blocked shots.
The Mavericks play the third matchup of a four-game road trip and the front end of a back-to-back when they fly to Detroit to take on the Pistons on Sunday evening, with the game airing on FSN Southwest at 5:00 p.m. CT.
Dallas returns to the American Airlines Center on Oct. 18, when the Mavs host the San Antonio Spurs, after the Spurs handed Dallas a 92-83 road loss on Wednesday night. The game will air locally on KTXA 21 and KTXA 21 HD and nationally on ESPN at 8:30 p.m. CT. Tickets are still available and can be purchased by calling (214) 747-MAVS.
The Mavericks and the NBA have introduced the official NBA All-Star game ballot, featuring Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd, Josh Howard, Shawn Marion and Jason Terry. For more on how to vote for your favorite Mavs for the All-Star game, to be held at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, visit Mavs.com.
Follow Mavs.com’s Earl K. Sneed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EarlKSneed.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment