ESPN

Potential won’t help the Mavericks accomplish their mission of pulling off an instant rebuilding job.

They need their lottery pick to be prepared to be a significant contributor immediately. That makes age a virtue for Mavs draft prospects.

PODCAST
ESPN.com senior NBA writer Marc Stein joins Fitzsimmons & Durrett to touch on the storylines in the NBA playoffs and offer a Mavs perspective. Listen

In the warped modern-day NBA culture, a player who spends three or four years in college is often looked at cross ways. Why wasn’t this guy good enough to be one-and-done or at least two-and-through?

That isn’t how the Mavs’ front office is approaching this draft, though. They don’t want to use the 13th overall pick, assuming they don’t luck out in the lottery, on a project to develop during Dirk Nowitzki’s golden years. They need a player who can be plugged into the rotation right away.

“There’s more known to taking a guy that’s a little bit older,” president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson said on a recent appearance on ESPN Dallas 103.3 FM’s “Galloway and Company,” pointing to second-round pick Jae Crowder’s success as a rookie after spending four years in college. “If you had your druthers, rather than take a younger guy that’s going to take more time to develop, taking seniors or taking guys that are a little bit older certainly has its place.”

That could make a pair of prospects particularly intriguing for the Mavs: Lehigh guard C.J. McCollum and Louisville center Gorgui Dieng.

McCollum, a 6-foot-3, 190-pound senior, is a scorer with the ability to penetrate who developed into a good long-distance shooter during his college career. The question is whether he can make the transition from college shooting guard to NBA point guard that Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook pulled off so successfully, not to say he’s that caliber of player.

If he’s solely a shooting guard, McCollum could still fit well with the Mavs, particularly if O.J. Mayo doesn’t return to Dallas. The Mavs had a lot of success over the years with Jason Terry playing the 2 and running the pick-and-pop with Nowitzki. McCollum’s skill set is certainly suited to take advantage of the attention paid to Nowitzki on those plays.

Another thing to like about the 21-year-old McCollum: He’s shown that he’s not intimidated by big stages. He lit up Duke for 30 points, six rebounds and six assists in an NCAA tourney upset last year.

Dieng is also a proven big-game performer, as evidenced by his eight-point, eight-rebound, six-assist, three-block outing in Louisville’s win over Michigan in the national championship game.

The biggest knocks on Dieng: He’s already 23 years old and isn’t much of a threat to score.

However, the 6-foot-11, 235-pound Dieng does have attributes that have proven to work next to Dirk. He’s a long, athletic, intelligent defensive-minded big man with excellent intangibles, much like Tyson Chandler. His Joakim Noah-esque passing skills are a bonus.

McCollum and Dieng don’t project to be NBA stars. But they do appear ready to be quality role players right away, and they just happen to play positions that are major needs for the Mavs.

Here’s how Mark Cuban views the first NBA postseason that doesn’t include Dallas in a dozen years: "Mavs fans just want teams with free agents to get eliminated early."

Well, then Lakers-Spurs couldn’t have gone better, huh?

After all, Dwight Howard’s team got swept. Heck, Howard didn’t even stick around the whole four games, getting ejected early in the second half of the embarrassing finale. And then he called his season in Los Angeles "a nightmare."

Howard, as expected, is sending all sorts of mixed messages about whether he’ll stay or leave L.A. It’s at least enough of a possibility that the Mavs must be fully prepared to make their best recruiting pitch.

And, no, there isn’t any question about whether the Mavs would want to take on all that Dwight drama. Here’s a pretty good rule of thumb for NBA GMs: If you can get the game’s best big man in his prime, do it.

Howard has plenty of baggage, but he’s a perennial All-Star who averaged 17.1 points, a league-high 12.4 rebounds and 2.4 blocks in a down year while coming off back surgery and dealing with a bum shoulder. He represents the Mavs’ best chance of pulling off the "quick rebuild" that Cuban is determined to make happen.

(That’s assuming Chris Paul stays with the Clippers, which we’ll probably address after the other L.A. team’s playoff run is over.)

Let’s make another thing clear: A lack of cap space won’t be the reason if the Mavs miss out on Howard. They’d have to move Shawn Marion or Vince Carter to be able to give him a max deal, but it wouldn’t be difficult to dump the salary of a quality veteran entering the last year of his contract. (CBA expert Larry Coon details the Mavs’ cap situation to the dollar here.)

First and foremost, it’s a matter of whether Howard is miserable enough as a SoCal scapegoat to leave the Lakers’ five-year, $118 million offer on the table to take $87.6 million over four years from another team.

If that’s the case, then Cuban, Donnie Nelson, Rick Carlisle and that goofy German guy must make a strong enough pitch to persuade Howard to pick Dallas instead of other potential destinations, such as Houston or Atlanta.

All due respect to Dirk Nowitzki, who is more than willing to become the second fiddle to accommodate a twenty-something superstar, but the presence of one of the all-time best power forwards can’t be the Mavs’ primary selling point. Not with Nowitzki turning 35 this summer and James Harden just approaching his prime in Houston.

The Mavs must sell Howard on their ability to build and sustain a contender around him. They did it for a dozen years around Dirk, and they need to make Howard believe they can do it for a decade around him.

Cuban, who is making the great sacrifice of not scheduling any "Shark Tank" tapings during the July free agency period, has to paint a championship picture for Howard. The big man has to believe, with the Mavs scheduled to have a ton of cap space again next summer, that the front office can put the pieces around him required to get another ring.

Two major pieces are in place: Nowitzki and coach Rick Carlisle, who can help the Mavs’ cause by showing clips of some of the plays the Pacers used to run to get Jermaine O'Neal the rock during his All-Star days.

And the Mavs must play to Howard’s flaws, convincing him that he’ll be comfortable in Dallas for the rest of his career. It helps that the front office has a strong relationship with agent Dan Fegan, who also represents Marion.

Is it likely that Howard will leave L.A. for Dallas? Nope.

But, hey, what were the odds in October that the Lakers wouldn’t win a single playoff game? That stunning development – and all the drama that unfolded this season in L.A. – certainly improved the Mavs’ odds of landing the NBA’s best big man as their next centerpiece.

DALLAS – Dirk Nowitzki has made it clear that he can’t stomach the thought of finishing his career fighting just to make the playoffs.

That doesn’t mean he’s pondering ever putting on another NBA franchise’s uniform. He’s simply pointing out the importance of the front office making major roster upgrades this summer to give the Mavericks a chance to compete for championships again.

PODCAST
Rick Carlisle joins Chuck Cooperstein and Tim MacMahon to discuss the Mavericks' disappointing season and what needs to happen for them to get back to the playoffs. Listen

“Honestly, I can’t really see myself going anywhere else but here,” Nowitzki said at the beginning of his first playoff-free offseason since 2000. “Really, the pressure is on Mark (Cuban) and Donnie (Nelson) to get this franchise back to where it belongs, and they know that. Then we’re all good, everything’s fine.

“I mean, I belong to this city. That’s just the bottom line. I could never see myself playing for another franchise, putting another jersey on. That would be probably the hardest thing I’d have to do in my life. I want to stay here, but I also want to play at a high level with a good team that we can be proud of and represent this city and this franchise.”

Nowitzki, who intends to sign a two- or three-year deal when his current contract expires after next season, is willing to do anything he can to help the Mavs recruit free agents this summer.

Unlike most summers, he’ll be in Dallas instead of his native Germany the majority of the time. That’s largely because his wife, Jessica, is expecting the couple’s first child. However, Nowitzki said he planned to be in Dallas at the beginning of July for professional reasons anyway.

“It’s a big summer,” Nowitzki said. “I would have probably been here in July regardless to knock on Cuban’s bunker suite every other day and see what he’s got cooking.”

The ever optimistic Cuban recently noted that Nowitzki’s wife is much more attractive than him, so the future Hall of Famer must have some persuasive skills. Those will be tested in early July, with Nowitzki still holding out hope that he can help talk Chris Paul and/or Dwight Howard into leaving Los Angeles for Dallas – or at least help recruit more realistic talent upgrades.

“I can try, but I’m really not the most positive person,” Nowitzki said. “I guess that’s a German thing.”

Nowitzki can confidently talk in glowing terms about his experiences living in Dallas and playing for Cuban, Nelson and coach Rick Carlisle. Those three men would be a major part of Nowitzki’s basketball sales pitch.

“We have a great owner and a great GM in place. We have a great coach in place that coached us to win the championship,” Nowitzki said. “We’ve got a couple of veterans (Shawn Marion and Vince Carter) still under contract. We’ve got some veteran leadership already, and then we’ve got a lot of roster space.

“We’ve got some cap space and we can get some players in here that can help. I think all those three experienced guys, they’ve still got something left in the tank. Come on in, we’ll see how far we can ride it out.”

Nowitzki plans to ride it out in Dallas until he retires, which is at least three years away.

DALLAS -- The Dallas Mavericks do not celebrate mediocrity.

OK, maybe they enjoyed shaving a few days ago.

But a franchise that popped champagne in Miami’s Club Liv a couple summers ago in celebration of an NBA championship doesn’t get giddy about going .500.

Granted, a 41-41 record is a fairly impressive accomplishment given that the Mavs were 10 games below in mid-January. They can be proud about putting up enough of a fight to be on the fringe of the playoff picture until the final week of the regular season. And at least they didn’t have their first losing season since 1999-2000, finishing even after a 99-87 win over the New Orleans Hornets/Pelicans in Wednesday’s finale.

“Those are all good things, but I’m not gonna try to blow sunshine up your butt and try to tell you that we’re happy to be .500,” Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said, putting things in perspective in typically colorful fashion. “That’s just not how things go here.”

Who knows how things are going to go this summer in Dallas?

This much is clear: Major changes are coming for the Mavs. Owner Mark Cuban and president of basketball operations Donnie Nelson can’t miss again this summer.

PODCAST
Rick Carlisle joins Chuck Cooperstein and Tim MacMahon to discuss the Mavericks' disappointing season and what needs to happen for them to get back to the playoffs. Listen

“We’re going to do everything possible to get back to where we need to be,” Cuban said before Wednesday’s win.

Eight or nine players from the Mavs’ final roster will be free agents, depending on whether O.J. Mayo exercises his option to return for a $4.2 million salary or tests the market for the second straight summer. Almost to a man, they say they’d like to be back in Dallas, but that’s not the way the business works.

The Mavs, depending on Mayo’s decision and the salary cap figure the NBA sets, will have somewhere between $13 million and $18.7 million in spending money this summer -- unless they create more space with salary-dump deals. They need significant upgrades to have a serious chance of competing at the level they had become accustomed to over the previous dozen seasons.

“I’ve been saying it all season long: It’s a big summer for us,” said Dirk Nowitzki, who is the only player guaranteed to return to Dallas next season. “We’ll see what Mark and Donnie can come up with. They’re always geniuses at making stuff happen. We need a big summer, obviously, to compete again for the championship and not for the eighth seed.”

It’s especially not the way the business works for a franchise embarrassed by being average and determined to get on the fast track back to contender status.

Carlisle, Cuban and Nelson are embracing the challenge of attempting to buck the odds with a quick rebuild. Nowitzki has committed to do whatever he can to aid the recruiting process.

Average is acceptable in some NBA cities. It’s a disaster in Dallas.

“You just get fired up to go to work and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Cuban said. “You can’t dwell, you can’t get mad. I’ve already broken up with this season, probably a game too early. I’ve already started the seven steps of recovery. I’ve been mad, and I’ll move forward."

“After tonight, it’s time to start looking forward to dating a new season," he said. "It’s been tough. It was definitely the date from hell.”

This is as far as the Mavs have been from guzzling bubbly in a long time. There’s no buzz, just a sick feeling in their stomachs.

The fact that the New Orleans Hornets are horrible helped the Dallas Mavericks’ cause.

The Mavs actually had a little motivation, too, wanting to at least finish .500.

Point guard Darren Collison, perhaps playing his final game for the Mavs, lit up his former team for a game-high 25 points, his second-highest point total of the season. Collison was 10-of-15 from the floor in 29 minutes off the bench.

Dirk Nowitzki added 16 points and nine rebounds before sitting out the fourth quarter. Shawn Marion had 15 points and seven rebounds and exited to a nice ovation with a few minutes remaining.

Eric Gordon led New Orleans with 17 points, but he was 4-of-17 from the floor and committed four turnovers. The Hornets shot just 36.9 percent.

What it means: The Mavs avoided having a losing season for the first time since 1999-2000. They finished 41-41. The Hornets, who will now be known as the Pelicans, went 27-55.

Play of the game: Nowitzki knocked down one of his trademark one-legged fadeaways at the third-quarter buzzer to stretch the Mavs’ lead to double digits for the first time in the game. It was a vintage Nowitzki move, creating the shot off the dribble and launching the 16-footer over the outstretched arm of New Orleans 7-footer Robin Lopez.

Stat of the night: Hornets small forward Al-Farouq Aminu had a 14-8 rebounding advantage over the Mavericks in the first quarter. Aminu, who averages 7.5 rebounds per game, set a franchise record for rebounds in a quarter. He finished the game with a career-high 20 rebounds.

The Dallas Mavericks will have to find ways to improve after missing out on the playoffs for the first time since 2000. They'll look at free agents. They'll add someone in the draft.

But who, besides Dirk Nowitzki, is the most important player for the Mavs to keep?

Is it Brandan Wright, who continued to get better as the season went along? Maybe it's Vince Carter, who arguably was the Mavs' MVP this season. Perhaps it's someone else.

Vote here for who you want to keep and let us know why.

The Dallas Mavericks aren't going to the playoffs. They won't finish with a winning record. So what do they need to do to get the franchise headed back in the right direction?

Dirk Nowitzki has shown he still has what it takes to one of the best players in the league on any given night, but he could use some help. As ESPN Dallas' Jean Jacques-Taylor writes:

To make the most of Dirk's golden years, the Mavs must get him some legitimate help instead of relying on this silly notion that he can be an elite player for another two or three seasons. They must make Dirk the second-best player on this team, which was the plan going into last season.

You can read the rest of his take on Dirk here.

So what would you do if you were the Mavs' shoes? Realistically, who would you like to see them bring in?

DALLAS – Say farewell to another streak for this proud franchise.

The Mavericks’ 11-year run of 50-win campaigns ended last season, when their winning percentage during the lockout-compressed scheduled meant no asterisk was necessary.

The 12-year playoff streak, which was the longest active streak north of San Antonio, was snapped last week.

And now the Mavs are assured of not having a winning season for the first time in a dozen years. The Memphis Grizzlies handed the Mavs loss No. 41 on Monday night.

“It’s disappointing,” Elton Brand said. “Playoffs is one thing, but you could have hung your hat on, ‘Hey, we had a winning season at least.’ Now, that’s impossible. The goal is now not to have a losing season.”

Added Vince Carter: “It definitely is tough, but 50 percent is not bad, either. It’s not losing, you know what I’m saying? We definitely want to go out there and get a win and accomplish that.”

And coach Rick Carlisle: “I’m just disappointed for our fans. I’m disappointed for my owner. I’m disappointed for our vets.”

It was an especially difficult pill for Dirk Nowitzki to swallow. As the lone constant on the roster during the dozen-year run, Nowitzki put a lot of pride into trying to at least salvage a winning record out of this season.

Nowitzki is now resigned to shooting for .500 in Wednesday’s season finale against the New Orleans Hornets.

“I feel like we should have competed a lot better there in the second half,” said Nowitzki, who scored a game-high 26 points. “Disappointing, but now we’ve got to make the best out of it. We’ve got one more game Wednesday and somehow crawl out a win.”

1. Carter passes Clyde the Glide: With a pretty reverse layup in the first quarter, Vince Carter moved past Clyde Drexler into 27th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. Drexler joined Hal Greer, Larry Bird and Gary Payton as Hall of Famers that Carter has passed this season.

“You accomplish something like that and you don’t pull out the win, it’s always tough,” said Carter, who had 22 points on 8-of-11 shooting, giving him 22,214 points in his career. “But I’m very thankful for the milestone. It’s just amazing. You just think of the names of the people you’ve passed that you’ve looked up to, played against, consider legends, so on and so forth.

“It’s just like, ‘Wow.’ To even hear your name passing those people is very humbling.”

2. Grown-ups’ table: Carlisle arrived in Dallas with a reputation as a coach who was hesitant to play young players. With a handful of under-25 players in the rotation, this has been a trying season for Carlisle’s patience.

“Look, I know Nowitzki is going to compete on every possession,” Carlisle said. “I know that Marion and Carter and Brand, those guys are going to show. I mean, that’s what they’ve done for a lot of years.

“But you know, beyond that, they’ve got to want it as much as everybody else wants it for them. That’s been the issue. Some of our younger guys have had the opportunity to sit at the grown-ups’ table this year and see what it’s like to have more responsibility. It can be a daunting thing.

“A lot of guys say they want it. If they want it, then how they show up, there’s got to be more presence. I think that’s a great word. A guy can have a bad shooting night, but he can still have great presence in the game. That’s what this franchise is looking for.”

3. One last stand: Carlisle’s expectations for the season finale are very simple.

“I am all about enthusiasm this year, really, and I’ve been very consistent with that,” Carlisle said. “But, you know, if you’re not going to compete, don’t show up at all.”

 

DALLAS -- Rick Carlisle bolted a couple of steps onto the court, right in the path of O.J. Mayo dribbling up the sideline, to frantically call a timeout midway through the fourth quarter.

After the referee blew the whistle, Carlisle shot a disgusted stare toward Mayo. The Dallas Mavericks coach appeared to resist the urge to rip the ball away from his 25-year-old shooting guard, who had two sloppy turnovers and a weak foul on a made layup in the minute and a half before that uncomfortable moment.

“I called that timeout just to get you out of the game!” Carlisle screamed at Mayo in the huddle, according to one player.

Just in case Mayo didn’t get the message, Carlisle made his criticism loud and clear during his postgame news conference after the Mavs’ 103-97 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. Mayo had a miserable performance against his former team, scoring only two points on 1-of-6 shooting and committing four turnovers before watching crunch time from the pine.

“I just want to see him show up,” said Carlisle, who was as harsh publicly with a player as he’s been since calling out Lamar Odom at the end of Mavs short-timer's strange midseason sabbatical. “I just want to see him show up and compete. He didn’t compete tonight.

“And I tell you, with all the time we’ve put into helping him develop and bringing him along, in the biggest game of the year -- an opportunity to be a winning team -- for him to show up like he did tonight, I was shocked.

PODCAST
Rick Carlisle joins Galloway & Company to discuss the Mavericks playing after being eliminated from playoff contention, who he wants to keep for next season and much more. Listen

"Look, sometimes guys have bad nights, so make sure to put that in there, too.”

The trouble is that Mayo tends to have bad nights against the West’s best teams. He has averaged only 10.6 points while shooting 38.2 percent from the floor and 19.0 percent from 3-point range against the conference’s top five seeds. Not coincidentally, the Mavs were 3-15 in those games.

Mayo was especially poor all season against the Grizzlies, a team that tried to trade the former No. 3 overall pick repeatedly and showed no interest in re-signing him last summer. He averaged only 8.5 points and had more turnovers (15) than assists (11) against Memphis this season.

“He just had a bad night,” Carlisle said after making a point to mention that the coaches showed Mayo film at halftime “where he was virtually just standing around defensively” and essentially implored him to mentally check into the game. “I guess I’ll write it off to that.

“But I tell you what, if I was playing against my former team, I’d come out ready to go. I’d come out ready to go at them. But that’s me. You know, that’s me.”

The bad nights have come in bunches for Mayo lately. His production has plummeted since the All-Star break, when he was averaging a team-high 17.9 points per game with the best shooting percentages of his career. His numbers have tailed off drastically in the last month and a half, averaging 11.8 points in March and only 9.0 in April.

Mayo’s good games, such as his 20-point, six-assist outing in last week’s upset of the Denver Nuggets, have been the exception recently. The poor performances are increasingly becoming the norm.

“Well,” Carlisle said, “the good news is there’s only an opportunity for one more.”

Just one more game before the Mavs begin the franchise’s longest offseason in a dozen years. And that wasn’t exactly a case of Carlisle, who had previously stated that he thought Mayo could be a starter on a contending team, welcoming Mayo back next season.

It’s been widely expected that Mayo, who has a player option in his contract for a $4.2 million salary next season, would decide to test the free agency market again this summer. However, Mayo recently told ESPNDallas.com that he hasn’t made a decision on whether to exercise his option to return to Dallas next season instead of looking for a long-term deal.

How many millions has Mayo lost in the last month and a half? At this point, it might make sense for him to try to put together a consistently solid season before testing the market again.

Mayo apparently didn’t have anything to say after Monday night’s loss. He dressed and left the locker room by the time the media was allowed to enter.

“I don’t know. You’ve got to ask O.J,” Dirk Nowitzki when asked about Mayo’s performance, considering Carlisle’s comments. “There are some nights where your jumper’s not going. We all go through it. You have to compete and play hard on both ends of the floor and impact obviously the game on other levels. That’s really all I can say about it.”

Carlisle can live with off-shooting nights. In fact, he made a point to heap praise on Mayo after his worst shooting game of the season, raving about the shooting guard’s hustle, toughness and all-around performance after Mayo was 1-of-13 from the floor while playing with an injured left shoulder in the March 30 comeback win over the Chicago Bulls.

But Carlisle can’t stand a lack of effort and lackluster focus. He’s given Mayo a lot of tough love in practices and film sessions this season. Carlisle let the world hear that criticism Monday night.

Carlisle didn’t single out Mayo when he talked about the daunting experience of young Mavs who have had the “opportunity to sit at the grown-ups’ table this year and see what it’s like to have more responsibility.” It was clear, though, that Mayo was the prime example.

“Look, he’s not the only guy that stunk tonight,” Carlisle said. “I stunk, too. I’ll readily admit that, and I’ve been admitting it all year. But I’m passionate about not wanting to stink.

“That’s where I have trouble reconciling things.”

At the moment, that makes it hard to envision Mayo continuing his career in Dallas.

How it happened: The Dallas Mavericks got overpowered at home by one of the NBA’s most physical teams.

The Memphis Grizzlies dominated the glass in the second half, allowing Memphis to overcome a slow start and come back to beat the Mavs. The Griz had a 28-16 rebounding advantage after halftime, when they trailed by eight points.

Memphis opened the second half with a 13-4 run to take their first lead of the game. The Grizzlies took the lead for good with a 13-4 run in the fourth quarter, when they held the Mavs without a field goal for a span of 3:41.

Dallas didn’t allow Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, one of the league’s elite center-power forward duos, to do much damage. Gasol had only six points and seven rebounds; Randolph had nine points and seven rebounds.

It was Memphis backup power forward Ed Davis (11 points, 11 rebounds) who made his presence felt during the critical stretch of the game. Davis, who arrived in Memphis as part of Rudy Gay midseason deal, had seven points and eight rebounds in the fourth quarter.

Dirk Nowitzki scored 15 of his game-high 26 points in the fourth quarter, but he didn’t get enough help from his Mavs teammates in the final frame.

It was an especially tough night for O.J. Mayo, who had four turnovers and only two points against his former team and got benched midway through the fourth quarter.

What it means: The Mavs’ 12-year run of winning records is over. The best they can do is finish 41-41. They failed to go over .500 for the first time since they were 7-6 in November. The Grizzlies (55-26) picked up a critical win in their fight for homecourt advantage in the first round.

Play of the game: Vince Carter/Brandan Wright pick-and-rolls tend to make pretty highlights. Wright’s slam dunk early in the fourth quarter certainly fit the bill. The finish was nice, but Carter’s fastball bounce pass made it possible. Carter had to put zip on the ball to squeeze it through a tight window to Wright in the middle of the lane.

Stat of the night: Carter passed Clyde Drexler for 27th on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with a reverse layup in the first quarter. Carter, who now has 22,214 career points after scoring 22 against the Grizzlies, has bumped four Hall of Famers down a spot this season, passing Hal Greer, Larry Bird, Gary Payton and Drexler. Elgin Baylor, Adrian Dantley and Robert Parish could be within Carter’s reach next season.

DALLAS -- The Mavericks are a much better-looking team Monday.

The .500 beards aren’t all gone, but they’re much better manicured, at least in most cases. Center Chris Kaman is the exception, as is often the case. He didn’t shave a single hair on his face, saying he intends to grow a Duck Dynasty-style beard.

“People are complaining about it,” Kaman said. “Don’t worry about it. It’s my beard.”

Dirk Nowitzki was the lone Mav to shave immediately after Sunday’s win in New Orleans. The majority of the bearded Mavs waited for Omar the barber’s American Airlines Center visit Monday afternoon. Vince Carter, O.J. Mayo and Jae Crowder got their beards trimmed and lined up. Bernard James, a late addition to the pact, went with a Fu Manchu that features a long goatee.

Elton Brand apparently didn’t get the memo about Omar’s house call. He went with a do-it-yourself Fu Manchu, leaving some scraggly sideburns.

“I didn’t know he was coming today,” Brand said. “I didn’t want to be the only one [who didn’t shave]. I actually thought about bringing it into the summer, keeping it to remind me about being under .500, make me work harder.”

NEW ORLEANS – After arriving in the NBA, Dirk Nowitzki didn’t know whether he could survive 25 games, much less score 25,000 points.

Here he is, 15 years later, one of 17 members of the league’s exclusive 25,000-point club.

“And as he showed tonight, he’s still got a lot left in the tank,” coach Rick Carlisle said after Nowitzki scored 19 points on 7-of-14 shooting in 27 minutes while surpassing a major milestone in Sunday’s win over the New Orleans Hornets.

Enough left to reach 30,000 points, something accomplished by only five men in NBA history?

“That’s tough,” Nowitzki said. “I don’t know how much time it takes for me to get (5,000 points), but I’m going to be around.”

He certainly isn’t ruling out a run at 30K. Nowitzki has verbally committed to re-signing with the Mavs for two or three more years after his contract expires in the summer of 2014.

If Nowitzki can stay relatively healthy, 30,000 points seems well within his reach. Figure he averages 1,300 points per season for the rest of his career – around 17 per game, figuring he sits out a handful of nights each year – and he can join the 30K club if he sticks around four more seasons.

“Yeah, I mean, it would sound nice, but I don’t know that would be something that would keep me going on one leg at 41 if it’s not fun anymore,” Nowitzki said. “Just to drag it around to get to (30,000), I don’t think that’s what I’m about. If it comes in the next couple of years, that would be great. If not, that’s fine, too. I play to win.”

The way Nowitzki feels now, he’s confident he can contribute to a winning team for at least the next few years. He readily admits he was questioning that midway through the season, after he missed 27 games while recovering from a preseason scope of his right knee and struggled upon his return.

But Nowitzki believes his performance since the All-Star break (18.8 ppg, 50.9 FG%, 44.6 3%) is an indication of what’s to come over the next few years. He’ll have a precautionary MRI on his left knee next week, making sure he doesn’t need to get that one scoped, too, and is already thinking about conditioning during what will literally be the longest summer of his NBA career.

The plan: Put in the work to be in peak form at the beginning of next season.

If Nowitzki can maintain that kind of hunger, why not project him to hit 30,000 points?

“A lot of being successful like this is being true to each individual day,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “I think it’s very hard to look ahead and say, yeah, this guy can play for four or five or six more years. In this league, it’s so competitive and it’s so uncertain, you’ve got to go day to day with it. That’s what Dirk has done for 15 years.

“I think that’s the reason he was able to reach this milestone. That’s the reason he was able to become one of the best ever to play this game. I think it gives him a chance to play for an extended period of time, but he’ll never look ahead.”

A few more notes from the win that finally bumped the Mavs’ back to .500:

1. Carter climbing all-time scorers’ list: Vince Carter will most likely hit a scoring milestone of his own Monday night.

Carter has 22,192 career points after scoring 16 Sunday, putting him four behind Clyde Drexler for 27th in NBA history. Carter has already surpassed Hall of Famers Hal Greer, Larry Bird and Gary Payton this season.

2. Marion’s monster night: It was overshadowed by Nowitzki’s milestone night, but Shawn Marion led the Mavs with 21 points, seven rebounds, six assists and two steals.

In a typical Mavs season, Marion would be peaking just in time for the playoffs. The 14-year veteran has been phenomenal in the last five games, averaging 20.6 points and 8.4 rebounds.

3. Stitches for Wright: Brandan Wright paid a price for his 16-point, 8-of-13 performance. He needed three stitches to close a cut on his left cheek, courtesy of an accidental elbow by New Orleans forward Al-Farouq Aminu.

Wright also caught an elbow from Aminu during a visit to New Orleans Arena last season, suffering a concussion in that case.

“I’ve got to watch out for him next time,” Wright kidded.

NEW ORLEANS -- It took the Dallas Mavericks 121 days to get back to .500.

It took Dirk Nowitzki maybe 90 seconds to get rid of the beard he has been growing for most of that time.

“That shave felt amazing,” Nowitzki said after a 107-89 victory over the New Orleans Hornets improved the Mavs’ record to 40-40. “There was some food caught in there from a few weeks ago.”

That’s a slight exaggeration, but Nowitzki’s forest of facial hair put the power of his electric razor to quite the test. Unlike the rest of the bearded Mavs, Nowitzki couldn’t wait for the morning to destroy the evidence from the pact they made in late January to not shave again until climbing back to .500.

After the final buzzer sounded, Nowitzki made a beeline for the Mavs’ locker room, picked up his razor and began bushwhacking. The beard was gone by the time coach Rick Carlisle addressed the team. After that meeting, Nowitzki and his trusty razor “cleaned up the rest on the neck and behind the ears and the nose hair a little bit.”

Said O.J. Mayo: “I need a barber to get mine. I’ve got to go see Omar the barber. I might get too trigger happy.”

Can you blame the Mavs' 25,000-point man for being in such a hurry to get rid of the beard? Never mind that he claims that his wife, Jessica, has refused to kiss him for a couple of months. It has been a long, tough climb back to .500 for a franchise accustomed to 50-win seasons.

The Mavs hit rock bottom in mid-January, when they dipped 10 games below .500 for the first time in a dozen years after a stretch of 13 losses in 15 games, with Nowitzki making his surgery-delayed season debut midway through that miserable run. Mayo hatched the beard pact a couple of weeks later, with Nowitzki, Vince Carter, Elton Brand, Jae Crowder, Chris Kaman and the since-traded Dahntay Jones taking part.

The hope was that they’d shave off the beards before resembling the Duck Dynasty dudes -- and en route to the franchise’s 13th consecutive playoff berth. Alas, that isn’t the way it went down.

The Mavs are a more-than-respectable 27-17 since the season’s low point, which projects to a 50-win pace over the course of 82 games. But they dug themselves such a huge hole that near perfection was needed to reach the playoffs.

The final win needed to get back to .500 proved to be especially pesky. After Mayo mentioned Omar the barber would be in the building, the Indiana Pacers blew out the Mavs by 25 points. The Los Angeles Lakers whipped the Mavs by 20 the next time Dallas had a shot to shave, essentially dooming the Mavs’ playoff hopes. And the sorry Phoenix Suns somehow managed to snap a 10-game losing streak with an 11-point win over the Mavs during Wednesday’s potential break-even game.

“We had a chance and laid an egg every single time,” Nowitzki said.

No wonder Nowitzki had no patience when it came to his postgame shave.

Hitting .500 isn’t exactly the kind of feat the Mavs have celebrated during Nowitzki’s Hall of Fame career, but it is quite an accomplishment given the circumstances of this season. It was also a necessary step if they’re going to reach the new goal of finishing the season with a winning record, which would require beating the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday and the Hornets on Wednesday.

“This means a lot to this franchise,” Nowitzki said. “This franchise has been a winning team for a long, long time and now the playoff streak is officially over, but we can still make it a winning season and feel good about ourselves going into the summer, feeling good [about] what we did with eight, nine new guys and me being out for so long. I think we can still feel good about ourselves, what we’ve done since the All-Star break. We have a decent record, I think, after the All-Star break, so it’s been fun the last couple of months.

“Before that, there was some rough patches.”

Amazingly, there weren’t any patches left of Nowitzki’s beard by the time he met the media Sunday night. If the Mavs’ superstar actually had an agent, he just might land an endorsement deal with the company that makes his little electric razor.

The Dallas Mavericks’ final step of their grueling climb back to .500 ended up being a pretty easy one.

On a milestone night for Dirk Nowitzki, who joined the 25,000-point club, the Mavs led by double digits from late in the first quarter until the final buzzer. The lead swelled to as large as 27 points in the second quarter.

The Mavs scored with ease against the injury-depleted Hornets’ defense. Shawn Marion (21 points) and Nowitzki (19) led five Mavs in double figures, as Dallas shot 52.3 percent from the floor and committed only eight turnovers. Vince Carter and Brandan Wright added 16 points apiece off the bench.

It was the Mavs' largest margin of victory since March 10, when they won by 23 in Minnesota.

What it means: Those .500 beards can finally go after the Mavs took advantage of their fourth shot at shaving. They also kept alive their goal of finishing the season with a winning record. Dallas has won three of its past four games at New Orleans Arena, where they had lost 11 in a row before this recent run of success. The Hornets fell to 27-54.

Play of the game: This routine midrange jumper had great meaning. Nowitzki became the 17th member of the NBA’s 25,000-point club with his shot over Hornets center Robin Lopez with 6:44 remaining in the second quarter. Nowitzki knew it, too. After the shot swished, he put his right index finger in the air as the Mavs’ bench erupted in applause.

Stat of the night: The Mavs were under .500 for 121 consecutive days. By comparison, they were under .500 for a total of 56 days in the previous 12 seasons, never after the opening month of a season.

NEW ORLEANS – Maybe the fourth time will be the charm when it comes to breaking the Mavericks’ .500 failures.

Some call it the Curse of Omar the Barber, whom O.J. Mayo publicly welcomed to shave those scraggly .500 beards when the Mavs got their first shot at the break-even mark late last month. Believe what you want, but there’s no denying that the Mavs are 0-3 when they’ve had a chance to get to .500, and their performances in those games have been uglier than their facial hair.

The 39-40 Mavs have another shot to shave Sunday evening, when they’ll face the New Orleans Hornets in that franchise’s final home game before officially becoming the Pelicans.

“We’ve been chasing .500 for a long, long time,” said Dirk Nowitzki, the bearded face of the franchise and one of six Mavs participating in the pact. “Every time we’re right there, we take a big L. We have another chance Sunday and it’s a big, big game for us.”

The Mavs were 11-11 the last time they were .500, way back in mid-December when Nowitzki had yet to play a minute this season while recovering from arthroscopic knee surgery. They dipped as low as 10 games under .500 on Jan. 9, when they were 13-23 after a miserable stretch of 13 losses in 15 games. The .500 beards pact began at some point in late January.

For most of the last two and a half months, those beards have been a warm, fuzzy story. That ended March 28, when the Indiana Pacers blew out the Mavs by 25 points at the American Airlines Center and boasted about keeping Omar’s clippers from buzzing.

The Mavs’ second shot at shaving didn’t go much better. They let the Los Angeles Lakers blow them out by 20 at the Staples Center on April 2, all but ensuring that Dallas’ dozen-year playoff streak would end, which it did when they were officially eliminated eight nights later.

The third strike might have been the biggest embarrassment for the Mavs. The Phoenix Suns snapped a 10-game losing streak with an 11-point win Wednesday at the AAC, causing Shawn Marion to question his team’s effort and Vince Carter to admit the Mavs took such a terrible opponent for granted.

Well, there’s no better place to break a curse than the Big Easy. (That’s a voodoo reference, not a dig at the 27-53 Hornets. With a different kind of curse, coach Rick Carlisle warned that only an “f------ idiot” would take a Mavs win for granted the morning before the stinker against the Suns. We’ll only make that mistake once this week.)

But the Mavs at least have recent history of breaking a possible curse here. They’d lost 11 in a row at New Orleans Arena, dating the Hornets’ quick dismissal of Dallas in the 2008 first round, before winning two of their last three in this building.

If the Mavs can win Sunday evening, they can get rid of their beards and remain focused on the post-elimination goal of finishing with a winning record.

Another loss, and Omar’s invitation will rank right behind the city of Dallas’ 2006 parade plans among the Mavs’ most regretful premature celebration plans.