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DALLAS -- One day, Jason Terry's No. 31 should hang from the American Airlines Center rafters, somewhere in the vicinity of the championship banner with his name on it.

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Rick Carlisle joins Galloway & Company to discuss Jason Terry's return to Dallas, why Dirk Nowitzki isn't getting the ball enough at the end of games and much more. Listen

On Friday night, a sellout crowd is expected to give the Boston Celtics’ No. 4 a standing ovation, as a man coach Rick Carlisle refers to as “Mavericks royalty” returns to the AAC for the first time since essentially being forced to leave in free agency this summer.

“I hope they give him a standing ovation,” said owner Mark Cuban, who made a difficult business decision not to match the three-year, $15.7 million deal the Celtics gave Terry, a longtime Dallas fan favorite and friend of Cuban’s. “He deserves it. He’ll be a Maverick for life. He’s part of the family.”

Life will be interrupted for the next three years. Maybe longer, if the 35-year-old Terry accomplishes his goal of playing until he’s 40.

But Cuban has made it clear that the man known as “JET” will be welcomed back into the Mavs organization on a full-time basis once he is done playing ball. Cuban has offered Terry a job in the Mavs’ front office, with the responsibilities to be figured out once the time is right.

“Basketball is a short part of your life, and then there’s the rest of your life," Cuban said. "Hopefully, we’ll be part of JET’s after he retires."

It wasn’t a popular decision to let Steve Nash leave and trade for Terry to replace him, but Terry established himself as a local legend due to his personality and performance during his eight-year tenure with the Mavs.

Terry joined Dirk Nowitzki as the only players on the rosters of both Mavs teams that made Finals trips and played a huge role in knocking out the Miami Heat in 2011. Terry came up huge in the clutch in Games 4 and 5 after publicly doubting whether LeBron James could shut him down the whole series and scored 27 points in the Game 6 clincher. Nowitzki has called his former scoring sidekick, who might as well have been the championship parade marshal with the victory cigar dangling from his mouth, one of the best clutch shooters in the game on countless occasions.

JET was also an unofficial mascot/cheerleader. A generation of Mavs fans grew up imitating the wings he made with his arms after hitting big shots, or really whenever the feeling hit him. Terry cared deeply about connecting with the fans, waving his arms to hype up the crowd and making hundreds of appearances in the community.

“He’s one of the most beloved players, I think, in the history of this franchise because of his personality, his relationship with the fans and the community, and he was a great player,” Carlisle said. “He was a prime-time great player in the clutch. Guys like that always distinguish themselves. It’ll be emotional, I’m sure, for him and the fans and some of us that got to know him well. But we know how good he is, and we’re game-planning for him too.”

Added Nowitzki: “He meant so much to our franchise. Not only on the court, where, to me, he’s one of the best clutch shooters I ever played with, but also off the court. He was a great community man. Every other day, he was doing something, appearances left and right. He’s just a guy with a huge heart. I wish him all the best this season, and hopefully he gets the ovation that he deserves.”

DALLAS – Darren Collison is one of the NBA’s best backup point guards.

That’s a backhanded compliment to a 25-year-old who entered the final season of his rookie contract determined to prove that he was a solid starter in this league.

That, however, is the reality of Collison’s role right now and most likely for the rest of the season. The Mavs are 5-3 since 37-year-old journeyman Mike James became the starting point guard, and coach Rick Carlisle has indicated on several occasions that he believes Collison’s game is best suited for coming off the bench.

Collison accepts his role. That doesn’t mean he embraces it – and it isn’t the ideal situation he’ll search for in free agency this summer.

“In my heart, I know I’m a starter,” Collison said. “I know what I’ve done. As of right now, I’m just trying to help the team win.”

Carlisle emphasizes that he still considers Collison, who was demoted for Derek Fisher earlier this season, to be as important to the team now that he’s a reserve than he was as a starter.

"Even though he’s an off-the-bench guy at this point and time, I view him as one of our starters," Carlisle said. “Much like Jason Terry was for four years here. Jet was one of our better players, but he came off the bench and gave us a lot in that role. We need Darren to do the same thing."

J.J. Barea is probably a better comparison, but you get Carlisle’s point.

Collison’s minutes haven’t seen too steep of a drop since he stopped starting. He averaged 31.1 minutes in 51 starts, compared to 24.8 in the last eight games.

Collison’s production isn’t drastically different in the reserve role, either. He has averaged 12.1 points and 4.1 assists while shooting 49.3 percent from the floor in the last eight games. As a starter, Collison put up 12.6 points and 5.7 assists per game, shooting 46.7 percent from the floor.

The biggest difference: Collison's plus-minus has been plus-51 in the last eight games; it’s minus-101 in his 51 starts.

“I think he’s in his wheelhouse right now,” sixth man Vince Carter said. “He’s very comfortable. And I think he gets the opportunity to kind of analyze the game before he plays it now. The game slows down and he’s playing at a really high level.”

Collison acknowledged that there are some benefits to coming off the bench. He gets to study the flow of the game for the first five minutes, and he typically tries to use his speed and quickness to increase the tempo. Plus, he feels that he has a little more freedom as a reserve.

“As a starter, you kind of want to get everybody involved the first five minutes,” Collison said. “When you come off the bench, everybody’s kind of already had their touches. You want to be a little bit more aggressive coming off the bench.”

Given the choice, Collison wants to be a starter. But that’s not an option in Dallas right now. Whether it is somewhere else will be determined in the free-agency market this summer.

DALLAS – The Mavericks have lost only two games during Dirk Nowitzki’s career when he has shot at least 80 percent from the floor with more than one attempt.

The Mavs are 14-2 in such games. The exceptions just happen to be their last two losses.

Nowitzki was 8-of-10 from the floor in Wednesday’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets, when he scored 16 points. He was also 8-of-10 in Sunday’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, when he scored 23 points.

This leads to a logical question: With Nowitzki locked in, why the heck isn’t he getting more than 10 looks in a game?

“They don’t leave me much anymore,” Nowitzki said, referring to opposing defenders hugging up on him at virtually all times. “It’s up to other guys to make plays. It’s as simple as that.

“I can’t wrestle every time to get the ball. You can’t do that for 48 minutes. I’ve got to pick my spots, take open shots when it’s there. I think we’ve been running pick-and-roll pretty well. Because guys are not really leaving me much, guys are pretty much walking in the lane, getting stuff out of that. I’m going to keep picking my spots and be aggressive when I need it.”

While Nowitzki doesn’t see it as a problem, it’s still unsettling to see 37-year-old journeyman guard Mike James get more shots than the 18th leading scorer in NBA history. That happened in both of the Mavs’ last two losses.

However, with the Mavs’ offense becoming less and less reliant on the longtime staple of Dirk isolation plays, that will probably happen again a few more times in the final 14 games.

“If you really watch the game, he’s touching it,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “It’s just teams work to take his shots away. That’s why balance is so important to us. That’s why we don’t want to get in a situation where we’re just pounding it to him every single time. That takes a big toll on him.

“That’s why we work toward movement and balance and tempo. When we have to go to him, we go to him.”

A few more notes from the loss to start the Mavs’ critical six-game homestand:

1. Lopez lights it up: Deron Williams has made it known that he loves shooting the ball at the American Airlines Center. Brooklyn big man Brook Lopez can surely relate.

Lopez scored a season-high 38 points Wednesday night, matching his scoring total from last year’s visit to Dallas. He was 15-of-22 from the floor, with all but three of his buckets coming in the paint.

“Chris (Kaman) did a good job guarding him in the post, but then there were residual things,” Carlisle said. “There were penetrations, there were breakdowns, there were other things that led to him being able to get into openings and cracks. Some of the stuff is just that we’ve got to be more solid individually within our system. Hey, tough night.”

2. Dreadful D: Allowing 113 points per game isn’t the kind of trend the Mavs want to continue.

“The irony is this is the same number of points we gave up the other night in Atlanta, but we scored 127, so it all seemed like it was OK,” Carlisle said. “But this is an ongoing challenge for us being able to keep teams at or under 100. We’ve got to keep going and keep working at it.”

The Nets shot 50.6 percent from the floor and scored 52 points in the paint.

“Our defense just wasn’t good enough,” Nowitzki said.

3. One-man rebounding machine: Another frequent problem for the Mavs popped up against the Nets. They got dominated on the glass, getting outrebounded by a 45-34 margin.

Brooklyn power forward Reggie Evans did a lot of the damage, grabbing 22 rebounds. He had eight rebounds in the second quarter, matching the Mavs’ team total for the frame.

DALLAS -- Guard Rodrigue Beaubois underwent surgery to repair the fractured second metacarpal in his left hand, the Mavericks announced Wednesday night.

No official timetable has been set for Beaubois' return, but the odds of him playing again this season are extremely slim.

Beaubois, a fourth-year guard whose future seemed so bright after a rookie season that featured several flashes of brilliance, was a fringe rotation player this season. He averaged career lows in points (4.0), rebounds (1.3), field goal percentage (.369), 3-point percentage (.292) and minutes while playing in 45 games this season, although he played well in two wins the week before he was injured.

Beaubois will be a free agent this summer, meaning he might have played his last game for the Mavs.

“I feel bad for the kid,” Dirk Nowitzki said after Beaubois broke his hand Sunday. “It’s just sad. Just so many injuries. He’s been here for four years and has missed a lot of action. … It’s tough. We feel bad for him. But he’s a good kid.

“He’ll stick around. The good thing is when you break your hand, you can still work out and run and stay in decent shape, because this is obviously a big summer for him. He’s a free agent and he obviously wants to stay in the league and have a long career. Hopefully he can get healthy and we’ll see where he lands.”

DALLAS -- Just another game for Deron Williams, huh?

For as well as Williams has been playing after emerging from the All-Star break healthy and slim, that might not be stretching the truth too much.

Just a guy who plays on another team? Yeah, Mark Cuban’s pregame attempt to downplay D-Will’s return to Dallas was way off the mark.

Maybe Williams really didn’t draw any extra motivation from his summer flirtation with his hometown team and fall back-and-forth with Cuban after deciding to be the face of the Nets’ move to Brooklyn. But Williams definitely gave the Dallas Mavericks a painful glimpse of exactly what they missed out on when their free agency pitch to Williams failed.

Williams torched the Mavs for 26 of his 31 points in the second half of the Nets’ 113-96 win, lighting up whichever overmatched Dallas guard was unfortunate enough to draw that defensive assignment, scoring on a variety of jumpers and drives.

Perhaps the prettiest of Williams’ 11 buckets in the second half: an 18-foot fadeaway that he launched just a few feet from Cuban’s courtside seat. That stretched the Nets’ lead to nine, prompting Mavs coach Rick Carlisle to call a timeout and Williams to crack a huge smile while glancing at the Dallas bench.

“When you’re feeling good and feel like you can’t miss,” Williams said, “it’s a good feeling.”

An especially good feeling because of Cuban’s claims that the Mavs were “better off” without Williams? If that was the case, Williams certainly wouldn’t admit it.

He stuck with his pregame claim that the only reasons the Nets’ annual trip to Dallas was special was because he got to play in front of friends and family and loved shooting at the American Airlines Center. Williams figured the cheers from those folks drowned out the smattering of boos from bitter Mavs fans when his name was announced with the Nets starters.

“I always get up for the games at home just because it’s home and given the situation,” said Williams, who kissed his wife and one of his children at courtside before heading to the Nets locker room after the game. “Honestly, I tried to attack it as a regular game. I didn’t eat anything special. It was a regular game for us, but a big game for us.”

After a rough first half of the season, Williams is having big games on a regular basis now.

Williams is back to being the point guard who had two franchises trying to convince him to accept their max offers this summer. (It must be mentioned, though, that Cuban didn’t exactly go the extra mile, opting to film “Shark Tank” in California instead of travel to New York with the rest of the Mavs’ recruiting party to meet with Williams.)

Since the All-Star break, when Williams dropped weight with a juice-cleansing program and got cortisone and platelet-rich plasma injections to help his ailing ankles, the Nets’ franchise player has been earning his money. Williams has averaged 23.9 points on 48 percent shooting since the break, scoring at least 30 points four times in 15 games.

“If you looked at the League Pass the last couple of weeks, he’s been on fire,” Dirk Nowitzki said. “He’s been moving better. I don’t know if he had health problems early in the season, but he looks way more aggressive. He’s in a groove. I don’t think it had anything to do with tonight. He wanted to win the game and he took it over.”

Added Carlisle: “He’s just a great player that got in a groove.”

Williams played a facilitating role in the first half, patiently running the offense while big men Brook Lopez (season-high 38 points) and Andray Blatche (14 points, all before halftime) kept the Nets in the game.

It became Williams’ game early in the third quarter. He got hot while exploiting a mismatch against the smaller Darren Collison and kept on rolling.

“He was so much more aggressive in the second half,” Dallas center Elton Brand said. “You could see it in his eyes. He wanted the next one. He was going to shoot no matter what. I know he wanted to prove a point, but I didn’t think he was overly aggressive. He’s just playing at a really high level right now.”

Kinda makes you wonder how the Mavs might be faring if they had Williams as the starting point guard instead of 37-year-old journeyman Mike James, huh?

Nowitzki, who led the Mavs with 16 points on 80-percent shooting but got only 10 field goal attempts, doesn’t want to go down the what-coulda-been road.

“He’s an exceptional player,” Nowitzki said. “We knew that before. That’s why we were trying to recruit him, so this is nothing new. He’s been one of the best point guards in this league.

“We had to move on as a franchise, though. We can’t be lingering. He made a decision last summer and I think both franchises moved on. That’s where we’re at.”

With Williams, the Nets are headed for the playoffs. Without him, the Mavs need a miracle to reach the postseason, especially after Williams’ game got the last word Wednesday night.

How it happened: Deron Williams, the point guard who decided this summer that he’d rather move to Brooklyn than play for the Mavericks, dominated the second half during the Nets’ annual trip to Dallas.

Brooklyn big man Brook Lopez dominated the entire game.

The 7-foot Lopez lit up the Mavs for a season-high 38 points and 11 rebounds, making 15 of 22 shots from the floor. Williams shrugged off a sluggish start to pour in 26 of his 31 points in the second half.

Williams was 13-of-25 from the floor, including a dagger 3-pointer with a little more than two minutes remaining, despite missing 5 of 7 attempts in the first half. He also dished out six assists.

Williams and Lopez took over the third quarter, when the Nets broke a halftime tie and took the lead for good. Lopez had 14 points on 6-of-6 shooting in the frame; Williams scored 13 on 5-of-7 shooting.

Meanwhile, Mavs star Dirk Nowitzki didn’t even attempt a shot from the floor during the third quarter. He finished with a team-high 16 points on 8-of-10 shooting.

The Mavs, who made 50.6 percent of their field goal attempts, didn’t have a problem scoring points. They simply couldn’t stop the Nets, especially once The Colony native Williams got cooking.

What it means: The Mavs started a critical six-game homestand on a sour note. The loss dropped Dallas (32-36) to 3½ games behind the eighth-place Los Angeles Lakers in the West standings with only 14 games remaining on the Mavs’ schedule. The Nets (40-28) remain in fourth place in the East, a game behind the crosstown rival New York Knicks.

Play of the game: An in-the-zone Williams swished a fadeaway jumper from the right corner to stretch the Nets’ lead to nine midway through the third quarter. Williams, who claimed Wednesday morning that this was “just another game” to him, couldn’t resist turning around and cracking a grin toward the Mavs’ bench while trotting up the floor.

Stat of the night: With his fourth rebound, Nowitzki became the 10th man in NBA history with at least 24,000 points and 9,000 rebounds. He joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Wilt Chamberlain, Shaquille O’Neal, Moses Malone, Elvin Hayes, Hakeem Olajuwon, Kevin Garnett and Patrick Ewing in that exclusive club.

A fistful of statistical tidbits, furnished by ESPN Stats & Information, in advance of the Mavs' home date Wednesday night with Brooklyn and former Colony star Deron Williams on ESPN:

Dirk Nowitzki is averaging 18.3 points per game since the All-Star break on 49.5 percent shooting from the field and 50 percent shooting from 3-point range. And his PER (player efficiency rating) since the break is up to 22.79. Before All-Star Weekend, Nowitzki averaged just 15.2 points per game on 42.3 percent shooting from the field and 38.8 percent shooting from the field after knee surgery cost him this season's first 27 games. Nowitzki's pre-break PER was 17.10.

Williams has also picked up his production since the All-Star break. The local product is averaging 23.4 points per game since the break compared to just 16.7 points per game before. Williams is also shooting 47.6 percent from the floor and 46 percent on 3s since the break, contributing to a PER of 24.35 since All-Star Weekend. Before the break, D-Will shot just 41.3 percent from the floor and 34.7 percent on 3s, leading to a PER of 17.51. The league average for PER is 15.

Dallas' offensive efficiency has also improved dramatically since it was mired at 13-23, averaging 107.7 points per 100 possessions over the past 31 games compared to 99.6 points per possession in its first 36 games.

The Mavs play at the league's fifth-highest pace, averaging 96.81 possessions per 48 minutes. They also average a league-high 41.7 points per game from their bench and rank fourth in fast-break points at 16.9 per game. Rick Carlisle's 21 starting lineups, furthermore, rank No. 2 in the NBA this season.

O.J. Mayo is still Dallas' leading scorer, but he's averaging five fewer points per game since Nowitzki's return to the lineup Dec. 30. Mayo averaged 19.8 points on 14.6 shots per game while Dirk was recovering and is at 14.8 points and 12.3 shots per game in the 40 games since. Mayo's field-goal percentage (.463) and 3-point percentage (.418) for the season, however, continue to be career bests.

DALLAS -- As far as Deron Williams is concerned, there’s only one little difference about this trip to his hometown.

“I usually get cheers here,” Williams said. “Now that’ll probably stop.”

Williams cracked a grin after that comment. He gets that he’s no longer known around these parts purely as one of the best basketball players ever produced by the area, joining Larry Johnson and Chris Bosh on the short list. Now the native of The Colony, a Dallas suburb, is the dude who decided that he didn’t want to play for the Mavericks when he had the chance this past summer.

Williams admits that most of the 25 or 30 people he’ll give tickets for Wednesday night’s Nets-Mavs game lobbied for him to choose Dallas when he was a free agent. He decided to move to Brooklyn with the Nets, swayed in part by the Nets pulling the trigger on a trade to acquire shooting guard Joe Johnson and his gigantic contract.

There was a little long-distance bickering between Mavs owner Mark Cuban and Williams before the season started, but Williams insists he’s not worried about that or anything else related to his free agency during this trip.

“It’s just another game for me,” Williams said before the Nets’ shootaround. “I’m glad my family and friends get a chance to come out and see the game. I’m glad I got a chance to spend a couple of days here and see people. But other than that, it’s just another game.”

It’s another game at the American Airlines Center, an arena Williams called his favorite in the league last year, pumping up hope that he’d sign with the Mavs even a little bit more.

Williams said Wednesday that he still loves this “shooter's arena.” He’s certainly performed well in front of friends and family, averaging 22.8 points and 9.0 assists while shooting 48.1 percent from the floor and 46.9 percent from 3-point range in 10 career starts at the AAC, although his team's record was just 3-7 in those games.

But Williams, who got off to a slow start this season has played his best basketball since the All-Star break, wanted no part of hyping this homecoming.

“I’m just going to try to focus on basketball tonight and not worry about anything else,” said Williams, who intends to ignore a certain courtside-sitting billionaire. “It’s another game, but it’s a big game for us. We’ve got to build on what we did last game and try to win in a tough environment.”

UPDATE: Cuban had a similar attitude when asked about how Mavs fans should treat Williams.

"I don’t care," Cuban said. "I don’t have any interest one way or another. He’s just a guy who plays on another team."

DALLAS -- Forward Shawn Marion isn’t quite ready to return after missing the past seven games with a strained left calf.

“It’s better, but I’m not going tonight [against the Nets],” Marion said after going through some of the Mavs' shootaround Wednesday. “Hopefully I’ll be ready by Friday.”

The Mavs have gone 5-2 during the absence of Marion, their most versatile player, best defender and leading rebounder. The Mavs face the Celtics on Friday.

Rookie Jae Crowder has done a capable job filling in as the starting small forward. Brandan Wright has taken advantage of power forward minutes made available by Marion’s injury.

DALLAS -- Mark Cuban, the Mavericks’ unofficial boo leader, didn’t hesitate to highly recommend that fellow MFFLs loudly direct their wrath at Derek Fisher on Sunday.

What about Deron Williams tonight?

Cuban is keeping his mouth shut on that one. Or he at least didn’t reply to an email inquiring about the subject. And he intentionally avoided making the trip to Brooklyn to see the Mavs play the Nets at the beginning of the month because, he explained, “I don’t need to be on the back page of the New York Post.”

That’s probably wise. No need for Cuban to give an opposing star any additional, fresh motivational fodder. (That worked out so well with Kobe Bryant, huh?)

Besides, Williams doesn’t deserve to be booed during his annual trip to the American Airlines Center, an arena the native of nearby The Colony described last year as his favorite in the NBA.

Unlike full-of-it quitter Fisher, Williams didn’t do the Mavs wrong. He just politely and professionally declined their halfhearted recruiting pitch and decided to move to Brooklyn with the Nets.

You can debate whether Williams made the right decision. You can argue that he’d have been better off as the centerpiece of a two-year rebuilding plan in Dallas instead of being stuck on a roster with bloated contracts in Brooklyn, which will be handcuffed by the CBA in its attempts to make the upgrades necessary to become a legitimate contender.

Cuban could have made those points in a face-to-face meeting with Williams in July, but he opted to have Michael Finley join Donnie Nelson and Rick Carlisle as the point men for the most important free-agency pitch in franchise history. Filming "Shark Tank" on the West Coast was Cuban’s priority, hence the halfhearted recruiting pitch.

If you’re still upset about Williams not coming home this past summer, boo Cuban, not the point guard.

Cuban is the one who has said that he didn’t really want Williams anyway -- and the whole "Shark Tank" deal seems to support that statement. (Cuban, who has taken some reality=show-related heat from Dirk Nowitzki, has vowed to keep his schedule clear for the first two weeks of July this summer.)

It was only after Cuban declared that he believed the Mavs were “better off” without him that Williams fired back, telling New York reporters that he might have signed with the Mavs if Cuban had only made the effort of meeting with him and answering his questions. That back-and-forth fizzled out quickly, and nobody else with the Mavs has any ill will toward Williams, whose concerns about being left to carry the Mavs by himself if Nowitzki went down seemed pretty prescient in the first two months of the season.

“He’s still a friend of mine,” Nowitzki said before the Mavs’ trip to Brooklyn. “Obviously, he didn’t come join us, but I wished him luck then.”

For the Mavs’ wish for a win to come true, they’ll probably need to contain Williams, who struggled through his own health issues for the first half of the season but is suddenly performing like an elite point guard again, averaging an efficient 23.4 points and 7.7 assists since the All-Star break.

No need for the AAC crowd to add any fuel to Williams’ fire with boos that would just make Mavs fans look bitter.

Better to save your venom for a deserving target. On a related note, Lamar Odom comes to town next week.

If Dirk Nowitzki put up his post-All-Star break numbers all season long, he probably wouldn’t have been able to take a midseason vacation on a Mexican beach.

PODCAST
ESPN Insider Marc Stein joins Fitzsimmons & Durrett to talk about the Mavericks' big win and if Rick Carlisle should be considered for NBA Coach of the Year. Listen

Since his 11-year streak of All-Star appearances was snapped, Nowitzki has averaged 18.3 points and 8.8 rebounds per game, shooting 49.5 percent from the floor and 50 percent from 3-point range.

“What we’re seeing now with Dirk is what we can expect to see next year and the year after, if he stays healthy,” Mark Cuban said. “And the year after that.”

Three more years of All-Star caliber play from a power forward who turns 35 this summer?

"At least," Cuban said.

“I’m not sure about all that,” Nowitzki said. “We’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully I can finish this season strong and have a good summer like I basically did last year with a lot of lifting and running and hopefully not have a setback with a surgery. We’ll see how consistent I can be again next season.”

It’s only been a couple of months since Nowitzki was wondering whether he wanted to keep playing after his contract expires next summer. He recently declared that he’d stick around through at least the 2015-16 season, but Nowitzki openly discussed making a transition from go-to guy to a role player in the years to come.

But Cuban can’t see Nowitzki as a role player, not even if the Mavs succeed in their year-old mission to acquire a legitimate star to pair with him, if not remove the burden of the franchise from the future Hall of Famer’s shoulders. Not for the next few years, at least.

“Is Kevin Garnett a role player? Is Tim Duncan a role player?” Cuban asked rhetorically. “Do you think Tim Duncan is going to be a role player next year? You think Kevin Garnett is going to be a role player next year? And those guys are based more on athleticism than Dirk is, you know?”

Cuban’s point: If Dirk’s peers as legendary power forwards of this generation can be All-Stars at 36, as Duncan and Garnett were this season, why can’t Nowitzki?

Duncan and Garnett both returned to the All-Star Game this season, a year after their decade-plus-long streaks of appearances were snapped at least in part due to knee problems that tend to pop up a decade and a half into a heavy-minute NBA career.

Garnett’s production has dipped in recent years, but he’s still a force for a perennial playoff team. Duncan’s numbers are down, too, but that’s primarily because his playing time has decreased. On a per-minute basis, there’s not much difference between Duncan’s production now and in his prime, and his Spurs are still contenders.

The talent and work ethic of players such as Duncan, Garnett, Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and Steve Nash gives them a chance to keep playing at a high level deep into their thirties. Advances in fields such as sports medicine, nutrition and strength and conditioning increase their odds to enjoy success as NBA old-timers.

“Just because of the technology, guys can stay healthy longer,” Cuban said. “The science of dieting and health is just completely different than when we let Nash walk nine years ago. I think it’s just a different animal.”

That’s why Cuban is counting on at least a few more years of the same, ol’ Dirk.

The Mavericks made their mini-road trip a success by beating the Atlanta Hawks.

It just got better after the Mavs boarded the team jet to return to Dallas. The Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz, the two teams directly ahead of the 10th-place Mavs in the West standings, both lost late games.

PODCAST
ESPN Insider Marc Stein joins Fitzsimmons & Durrett to talk about the Mavericks' big win and if Rick Carlisle should be considered for NBA Coach of the Year. Listen

Here come the Mavs, three games out of the last playoff spot entering a six-game homestand. Per the Hollinger playoff odds, the Mavs have a 14.5 percent chance of extending their postseason streak to 13 years.

Not that Dirk Nowitzki wants to get bogged down with details, numbers and scenarios. At this point, the face of the Mavs’ franchise prefers to keep things very simple.

“We’re going to fight at the end,” Nowitzki told reporters. “We’ll see where that brings us at the end. I think we want to fight for every night and not look at the big picture. We want to win the next game, and that’s what we need to focus on and really leave it all out there.”

Since the season’s low point, when the Mavs dropped to 10 games under .500 for the first time since right after Mark Cuban bought the team in 2000, Dallas has performed like a playoff team. The Mavs are 19-12 in their last 31 games, a .613 winning percentage, a.k.a. a 50-win pace.

That still hasn’t been enough for the Mavs to dig out of the huge hole they dug themselves – or even shave – but they’ve given themselves hope with 15 games remaining.

“The second part of the season, we’re just a different team,” Vince Carter told reporters. “Guys are just learning. That’s just the way it is. I think we’ve stayed the course and been relentless.”

Added Darren Collison: "We still believe. We still believe we can make it. There's no quit in us. We believe that every game from here out we can get a win. We're talented enough. We've got the players to do it."

A few more notes from the Mavs’ highest-scoring game of the season:

1. Defense rests: Coach Rick Carlisle described the Mavs’ 127-113 win in Atlanta as a “defensive pillow fight.”

Needless to say, he wasn’t ecstatic with allowing the Hawks to shoot 56 percent from the floor, although Carlisle acknowledged that he’d take the win and run.

Carlisle’s point was that the Mavs would have to play better defense for this six-game homestand, which starts Wednesday against the Brooklyn Nets and features nothing but plus-.500 foes, to be a happy one. Nowitzki hammered that point home in the locker room.

“I don’t think we’re happy with our defensive outing, but offensively that’s just about as good as we’ve played all year,” Nowitzki said. “We’ve got a big homestand coming up. We’ve got to be better defensively than that.”

2. Collison on point: Darren Collison lit up the Hawks for 24 points on 10-of-14 shooting, his second-highest scoring game of the season. It was the first time Collison scored at least 20 points since Jan. 14.

Collison took over the game in the second quarter, scoring 15 points in the frame on an array of jumpers, drives to the basket and cuts for layups.

"I was able to get it going," Collison told reporters. "A lot of players in this league, once they get it going, that basket looks bigger and bigger, and that's what happened in the second quarter."

3. Making use of Morrow: Anthony Morrow made by far his biggest impact for the Mavericks in his return to Atlanta, the team that traded him to Dallas at the deadline.

Morrow played 13 minutes – more than twice his total playing time for the Mavs entering the night – and had eight points and three assists. That included some meaningful minutes in the first half. Morrow, known for his long-range marksmanship, has still yet to hit a 3-pointer for the Mavs. He didn’t attempt one against the Hawks, but he was 3-for-4 from the floor and moved the ball crisply and efficiently when the Hawks closed out on him in 3-point territory.

“We dusted off Anthony Morrow,” Nowitzki joked.

How it happened: A Dallas team that had a ready-made excuse of tired legs played terrific offensive basketball.

Playing their fourth game in five nights, the Mavs set a new season high for points, scorching the Hawks for 57.3 percent shooting from the floor. Dallas hit 13 of their 22 3-point attempts (59.1 percent).

Six Mavs scored at least a dozen points, led by second-team point guard Darren Collison’s 24 on 10-of-14 shooting. In his first 20-plus-point performance in more than two months, Collison exploded for 15 points in the second quarter, a key to the Mavs building a double-digit lead that they maintained the rest of the game.

Power forward Dirk Nowitzki added 22 points on 7-of-11 shooting and matched Collison with a team-high five assists. Shooting guard O.J. Mayo (17 points, 7-11 FG), center Chris Kaman (14 points, 7-11 FG), sixth man Vince Carter (13 points, 5-9 FG) and reserve center/forward Brandan Wright (12 points, 5-9 FG) also scored in double figures.

The Mavs had 33 assists on 50 field goals, evidence of how well the ball was moving.

The Hawks had eight players score in double figures and shot 56.0 percent from the floor, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with the Mavs.

What it means: The Mavs managed to keep their playoff hopes legitimately alive, slim as they may be, by mustering a magnificent performance in a must-win game. After splitting four games in five nights, the Mavs are 32-35, putting them 3 ½ games out of eighth place in the West standings pending the Los Angeles Lakers’ late game against the Phoenix Suns. The Mavs are 5-2 on the road this month, including a couple of wins over plus-.500 teams, something they did just once in the first four months of the season.

Play of the game: After pump-faking and drawing contact from Harris, Darren Collison showed a little savvy and got a lot of luck. He blindly fired a 16-footer that swished while he fell on his backside. The three-point play stretched the Mavs’ lead to 10 points early in the second quarter.

Stat of the night: The Mavs’ 68 points in the first half wasn’t just their most by halftime this season. It was the most in the first half by any team this season that was playing the second game of a back-to-back, according to the Mavs TV broadcast’s research.

DALLAS – O.J. Mayo has been at his worst against the West’s best.

Not coincidentally, so have the Mavs.

Dallas is 1-12 against the Western Conference’s top four seeds this season after Sunday’s loss completed the Oklahoma City Thunder’s sweep of the season series. The San Antonio Spurs also swept the Mavs, who have lost both of their meetings with the Los Angeles Clippers and are 1-2 against the Memphis Grizzlies.

Mayo is leading the Mavs with an efficient 16.8 points per game this season, but his production has fallen off a cliff against the conference’s top four contenders. Mayo is averaging only 10.6 points in those 13 games, shooting .352 from the floor and .146 from 3-point range, as opposed to .461 and .414 overall this season.

The Mavs have been outscored by 128 points with Mayo on the floor in those 13 games. He’s a plus-21 for the rest of the season.

Why has Mayo struggled so much against the conference’s elite?

“I don’t know,” Mayo said after scoring nine points on 4-of-10 shooting Sunday. “Couldn’t tell you.”

Fortunately, Mayo’s neighbor in the Mavs’ locker room offered a much more elaborate answer.

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“The good teams obviously do a good job on him, like they used to do on Jet,” Dirk Nowitzki said, referring to his former scoring sidekick Jason Terry. “They know he’s a very, very big part. When he scores high, we usually have a good chance of winning. He’s a very good shooter, so most of them don’t leave him. They get into him. Off the screen-and-roll, they quick-trap him.

“He’s just got to keep on working. Keep coming off down screens and looking for his shot. He got to the basket a couple of times. I guess he’s got to just keep attacking. Keep attacking and look for what’s there.”

Coach Rick Carlisle has preached the importance of patience and discipline to Mayo, stressing that it’s especially important not to try to do too much against good defensive teams. Mayo didn’t feel like he had a chance to make an impact in Sunday’s loss, mentioning that he “was pretty much just spotted up in the corner.”

“I just got to have an opportunity to be aggressive,” said Mayo, who has been the Mavs’ third offensive option this month with Vince Carter getting hot. “We’ve got a moving type of offense. You don’t want to be ball chasing or really forcing the issue because that looks bad. You’ve got to just take what they give you and have an opportunity to knock down some shots.”

When Mayo has had those opportunities against the West’s best, he hasn’t knocked them down nearly often enough.

That’s a concern with the Clippers on the schedule next week and one more game remaining against the Grizzlies. It’s also a concern for the future if Mayo returns to Dallas next season.

“He’s got to pick up his game against those (teams),” owner Mark Cuban said before Sunday’s game. “Juice and I have talked about it. He knows he does. There’s nobody who’s more aware of it than O.J. is. O.J. works hard. That’s part of the progression of being 25.”

A few more notes from the Mavs’ second gut-wrenching loss to a contender in their last three games:

1. Bad break for Roddy B.: Rodrigue Beaubois’ season might be over after he fractured the second metacarpal in his left hand during Sunday’s second quarter.

“I don’t know what to say,” Carlisle said. “I just feel very bad for him. He had put the work in. He had been playing well and this was a game we needed him. He’s had some bad luck with injuries. We just hope he can get back. I don’t know if he’s going to be able to this year or not.”

The injury bug first hit Beaubois in the summer after his promising rookie season, when he broke his foot while practicing with the French national team. That injury required two operations to repair and limited him to 22 games his second season.

Beaubois has dealt with various nagging injuries over the last two years and has failed to develop into a solid rotation player, much less a star. But he earned his way back into the rotation with two solid performances last week, including an 18-point, five-assist outing to key the Mavs’ Friday win over the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It’s now uncertain whether Beaubois, who was unavailable for comment after the game, will ever play for the Mavs again. His rookie contract expires at the end of the season.

“I feel bad for the kid,” Nowitzki said. “It’s just sad. Just so many injuries. He’s been here for four years and has missed a lot of action. … It’s tough. We feel bad for him. But he’s a good kid.

“He’ll stick around. The good thing is when you break your hand, you can still work out and run and stay in decent shape, because this is obviously a big summer for him. He’s a free agent and he obviously wants to stay in the league and have a long career. Hopefully he can get healthy and we’ll see where he lands.”

2. Center switch: The Mavs’ starter at center is back to being a mystery that will be solved when starting lineups are announced 16 minutes before tipoff.

Elton Brand started for the first time since Feb. 1, scoring four points and grabbing four rebounds in 21 minutes.

“The starting center doesn’t play too many minutes usually,” Brand said, half-kidding. “I was hoping that wasn’t me, so I was trying to make a difference out there.”

Chris Kaman, who had started the previous five games, had two points and three rebounds in 4:32 off the bench. It was the third time in the last four games that Kaman played six or fewer minutes.

Brandan Wright, who saw some time at power forward, got the most minutes among the big men. Wright had eight points and seven rebounds, but he was only 4-of-12 from the floor, far less efficient than he’d been recently.

Rookie Bernard James, the starting center for most of February, got a DNP-CD for the seventh time in the last 10 games.

3. On to ATL: The Mavs finish up a dreaded four-games-in-five-nights stretch on the road Monday night against the Atlanta Hawks. With the Mavs clinging to slim playoff hopes, they’ll need to muster energy to perform in what’s pretty much a must-win game.

“We have to dig deep,” Brand said. “This is a game that can make or break our season.”

DALLAS – While Kevin Durant dominated, Dirk Nowitzki couldn’t even get the ball.

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Just look at the startling contrast between the two superstars’ lines during the fourth quarter of the Dallas Mavericks’ 107-101 loss Sunday night that further damaged Dallas’ dim playoff hopes.

Durant went 7-of-11 from the floor in the final frame, torching the Mavs for 19 of his 31 points. Nowitzki was held to four points -- all on free throws, not even attempting a field goal attempt -- despite being 8-of-10 from the floor in the first three quarters.

That illustrates the difference between two of the most unique, effective offensive weapons in NBA history at this point of their careers. The 24-year-old Durant is capable of taking over a game at any moment. The 34-year-old Nowitzki needs help to be put in position to dominate.

“The guards kind of have to be able to get the ball to Dirk,” Mavs big man Elton Brand said. “With Durant, he’s dribbling the ball up.”

Durant’s 17-point flurry in a span of 5:13 in the fourth quarter did indeed feature a pull-up 3-pointer. If he wasn’t bringing the ball up the floor, Durant could go as far out as necessary to catch it before attacking.

Jae Crowder and Vince Carter combined to keep Durant relatively quiet for three-plus quarters with Mavs defensive stopper Shawn Marion (calf) wearing street clothes and watching from the bench. But the dam broke for Durant early in the fourth.

“When he made that first shot in the fourth quarter, just the basket was big for him,” said Nowitzki, who finished with 23 points. “He made shots going left, going right, pull-up [3-pointers], got to the basket, he was shooting one-leggers. He had the whole full arsenal going. That’s tough.”

It’s tough for Nowitzki to create shots for himself these days. While he never possessed anything near Durant’s remarkable athleticism, Nowitzki now ranks 18th among the NBA’s all-time leading scorers in large part because of his ability to face up and feast against opposing power forwards and centers.

Dirk isolations, often with him catching the ball just above the elbow, used to make up the meat of the Mavs’ playbook. Those plays are now endangered species in Dallas, partially because of the physical toll it takes for a 7-footer to repeatedly have to create for himself, especially one who missed the first 27 games of the season after undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery.

“We know that a lot of teams are loading up and really making me work and pushing me out on the catches and denying me and just making it hard,” said Nowitzki, whose scoring average (16.2 points) is the lowest since his rookie season in 1998-99. “We feel like it’s easier with screen-and-rolls, keep attacking and keep moving. It’s a fun offense to play if everybody’s touching and moving the ball. That’s how we’ve been winning. We’re not a pound-it, iso team.”

In this case, Nowitzki felt no need to force the issue. He pointed out that the Mavs, who put up 29 points in the fourth quarter, weren’t having a problem scoring.

Nevertheless, it’d be nice to see the Mavs keep feeding Nowitzki after he hits his first eight shots from the floor. He seemed headed for a huge game after a personal 8-2 run early in the third quarter, when he drilled two 3s and a 21-footer in a span of 83 seconds.

Nowitzki got a grand total of two more shots from the floor -- and no more buckets -- in the next 20 minutes.

“They didn’t leave me anymore,” Nowitzki said. “Obviously in transition, they ran right to me. Even when we had some stuff happening on the strong side, they were just hugging me on the weak side and basically saying, ‘We don’t even want him to catch the ball.’ That’s an adjustment a lot of teams make.

“I still think we were right there. I don’t think that’s why we lost the game. We were scoring enough there in the fourth. We just couldn’t get stops anymore. That’s what hurt us.”

Of course, Durant had a lot to do with that. He was demanding the ball while Dirk was in decoy mode.

“I just told [Thunder coach Scott Brooks], ‘Let me see the ball and I’ll try to make the right play,’” Durant said. “And he trusted me enough to give it to me. … Fourth quarter, coach always tells me, is my time, I just got to come through.”

The fourth quarter used to be Nowitzki’s time, as the Thunder knows all too well, having been victimized by Dirk’s clutch dominance over and over again in the 2011 Western Conference finals.

Those nights are no longer the norm for Nowitzki. For the Mavs to make a miraculous playoff push, they need to be, although the reward might be an unhealthy dose of Durant.