Avery's Return Sees Maverick Win Streak To 11: Mavericks 102 Nets 89

The Mavericks have a far different roster than they did in the summer of 2006 when fiery head coach Avery Johnson, now coaching the Nets, took his team to the NBA Finals.

Despite the fact that only Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry remain from the squad five seasons ago, everyone on the court seemed to play with an extra spark as the Mavericks looked to display their continuity and why they now carry an 11-game win streak.

Former Maverick and current Net Devin Harris played under Johnson in Dallas also. He left the game after the first quarter with a sprained shoulder.

The leading scorer in the 102-89 victory over the Nets at the American Airlines Center on Wednesday was Dirk Nowitzki with 21, but the buckets were well spread out. Shawn Marion found the hoop for 18 while Caron Butler and Jason Terry each had 15. It doesn’t end there. Brendan Haywood tallied nine points and Jason Kidd, DeShawn Stevenson and J.J. Barea each finished with six.

The Mavs shot 54.7 percent for the game compared to the Nets’ 41.6 percent. I guess they looked more human in the second half after making 65 percent of their shots in the first half and 71 percent in the first 12 minutes.

Notably, Nowitzki hit a jumper just before the first quarter buzzer to give the Mavs a double-digit lead at 30-19. They got even more heroics at the end of the half. With the Nets threatening to trim the advantage to single digits, Terry, the Mavs team leader in steals, stole the ball, passed to Butler who passed to Kidd, who connected from long range to increase the lead to 15 in the fleeting seconds of the half.

The score expanded to a 20-point lead at 60-40 in the first 1:30 minutes of the third. But TV analyst Bob Ortegal said that big leads can disappear quickly if a team doesn’t maintain its focus. With 3:43 on the clock, the lead suddenly shrunk to eight.

But the Mavs are a team full of excellent finishers and are among the leaders in fourth-quarter defense. That can get a team a lot of wins.

Note: Barea set a career high with 13 assists.