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A six-pack of statistical nuggets to help get you reacquainted with the Mavericks as they return to work after All-Star Weekend:

*Steve Nash was back at Dirk Nowitzki’s side during Sunday night’s All-Star Game, but Nash is no longer in the top five in terms of regular-season games played as a Dirk teammate. Jason Terry has played 559 regular-season games alongside Nowitzki for the Mavs, followed by Michael Finley (471), Shawn Bradley (467), Erick Dampier (412) and Josh Howard (411).

*Nowitzki’s run of 11 consecutive All-Star selections is the second-longest active streak in the league. After Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan saw their respective runs of 14 and 13 end over the weekend, Dirk trails only Kobe Bryant’s 14 straight All-Star trips among active players. Dwyane Wade and LeBron James are next in line with eight straight All-Star trips.

*The Mavericks shot 46 percent from the 3-point line in their four-game playoff sweep of the Lakers. In this season’s two meetings? Dallas is shooting just 20.7 percent from long range against L.A.

*The loss to the Lakers in their final game before the All-Star break was the Mavs’ first this season in which they held a fourth-quarter lead at home. That leaves Chicago, Indiana and Oklahoma City as the only teams that haven’t lost at home after leading in the fourth quarter this season.

*Last Wednesday’s game was Kobe Bryant’s 52nd regular-season appearance against Dallas, breaking Bryant’s tie with James Worthy (51) for the most games against Dallas for any Laker.

*The Mavs still narrowly rank as the league’s second-oldest team with an average age of 30.0 … just behind Atlanta’s average age of 30.2.

MIAMI -- When the final buzzer was about to sound, Jason Kidd wanted the one thing point guards love to have: the basketball.

Standing near the scorers table, Kidd got the ball for the final dribbles of the 2010-11 season. The Dallas Mavericks knocked off the Miami Heat in six games, winning the final one 105-95 in Game 6 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night.

Kidd, a 17-year veteran, was smiling and hugging anybody he could.

"Man, it's a dream come true," Kidd said. "It's not real right now because just the battles against the Heat and understanding the journey, it's been a long journey for 17 years. I thought I had an opportunity in '03 to win a championship [with New Jersey], and I was on the other end. We lost to the Spurs."

In his third trip to the NBA Finals, Kidd finally got a championship. It's something all players seek when they enter this league, and Kidd, after getting there twice with the Nets, wasn't sure he would get here again.

But a midseason trade during the 2007-08 season changed things for him. The Mavericks sent a younger player, Devin Harris, to the Nets for Kidd in an eight-player deal. At first the deal didn't seem to work out for the Mavs with then-coach Avery Johnson. There was the game versus the San Antonio Spurs that season when Kidd was taken off the floor in the last 34 seconds of a loss.

"You have to talk to coach about that," Dirk Nowitzki told reporters at the time.

Kidd took the high road, saying he supported the decision. Still, a future Hall of Fame point guard taken off the floor in the closing moments of a game? Sounds crazy.

After Johnson was fired, Rick Carlisle came in and understood what he had in Kidd. He didn't have a player who was a scorer. He had a facilitator. An assist man who worked on his jumper just in case it was needed.

"His view of the game is so different, and he's savant-like," Carlisle said. "He's just been a thrill and a privilege to spend time with."

In these Finals, Kidd was the glue.

After Dwyane Wade and LeBron James had a little sparring session near the Mavericks bench in Game 2 after building a 15-point lead, it was Kidd who kept Jason Terry calm.

"Deuce is funny," said Terry, referring to Kidd by his jersey number. "He said being from Oakland, he said it brought out the GP in me. Everybody knows who GP is, Gary Payton. One of my idols. A good friend."

Terry sparked the dramatic rally that the Mavericks staged to win Game 2 on the road.

On Sunday night, when Nowitzki struggled with his shot (he was 4-for-19 after three quarters), Kidd got into the head of the Finals MVP and told him to keep going.

In the fourth quarter, Nowitzki made 5-of-8 shots, scoring only one fewer point in the fourth than Dwyane Wade and LeBron James combined.

"We just kept playing," Kidd said. "That just shows the character of this team. No matter how old you are, we understood how to play the game, by passing the ball and making sure that we didn't take shots where three or four guys are on you. We just made the extra pass. We didn't care who put the ball in the basket."

Dirk Nowitzki made it perfectly clear after the Dallas Mavericks' amazing Game 2 comeback what has to happen in Game 3.

MIAMI -- One of the big storylines heading into Game 1 of the NBA Finals was how the Mavericks' big men would handle the Heat's.

One big man, the Mavs' Tyson Chandler, didn't have his best performance.

Chandler struggled in his 34 minutes Tuesday night, scoring nine points on 3-of-4 shooting from the field but also tying his playoff low with four rebounds and playing in foul trouble most of the evening. He picked up his fifth foul with 10.1 seconds left.

"They were aggressive on the rebounds," said Chandler, whose team was outrebounded 46-36. "I thought we did a good job defensively of containing them and keeping them under control. But what we didn't do was secure the rebounds once we got a stop."

That was true during one key sequence late in the game in which Chandler didn't perform well.

With the Mavericks trailing 87-79, Jason Kidd missed a 3-pointer. Chandler appeared to have position on Dwyane Wade but couldn't secure the rebound. Wade dribbled to the corner and was trapped by Chandler and another Mavericks player but spun away from them.

Wade dribbled through two more defenders before stopping in front of Kidd near the foul line. Wade floated a pass to Chris Bosh, who got ahead of the defense and scored on a dunk to push the lead to 89-79.

On the ensuing possession, Dirk Nowitzki missed a short jumper. Chandler was near the rim but failed to grab the ball to put it back in. It appeared Chandler was afraid he might get called for basket interference. He let the ball go, and the Heat got the rebound and went on a fast break.

This time, Wade drove the lane and Chandler left LeBron James alone, allowing him to finish an alley-oop pass for a dunk and a 91-79 lead.

"They made the plays at the end of the game," Chandler said. "... We've got to clean up some things, do a better job on the glass. They came up with a couple of plays down the stretch that let them open up the game."

Chandler's low scoring isn't a problem for the Mavs, but rebounding issues could hurt.

In the Western Conference finals, Chandler averaged 10.6 points and eight rebounds per game. He had two double-digit rebounding games and didn't have a game with fewer than eight boards.

Shawn Marion, who grabbed a team-high 10 rebounds Tuesday night, can't do it alone. Brendan Haywood had seven rebounds off the bench, and Nowitzki added eight.

The Mavericks have relied on Chandler's rebounding during the postseason. He grabbed a playoff career-high 20, including 13 offensive, in Game 5 of the first-round series against Portland, and he's averaging 9.3 rebounds overall in the postseason.

"Our bigs have to be active, containing their great players on the perimeter," Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said, "so it draws them away from the basket some. I'll look at the film."

Saturday night is done.

Well at least the skills competition, three-point shootout and slam dunk contest.

Another night of partying and now it's time Sunday night's All-Star Game.

Before he head to one, we're kind of tired, here is a VIP guest list of who attended Saturday night's action:

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Spencer Haywood, Spike Lee, Darryl Dawkins, Miles Austin, Shaquille O’Neal, Jerry Stackhouse, Dwight Howard, AC Green, Bill Russell, Stacy Augmon, Dominique Wilkins, Nancy Lieberman, Terrell Owens wearing sunglasses, Jay Z wearing sunglasses, Mario Lopez, Paul Simon sitting next too Mary J Blige wearing sunglasses, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Michael Rapaport, Kevin Durant, Dwyane Wade, Doug E. Fresh, Alonzo Mourning, Dell Curry, Erykah Badu, Scottie Pippen, Emmitt Smith, Charles Barkley, Jamie Foxx, Ken Hamlin.

And, Dell Curry, Floyd Mayweather, P. Diddie, Carmelo Anthony, Mark Aguirre, Spud Webb, Chris Tucker and
Chris Bosh.

With a knowing nod to a legend, we’re scatterhooping while wondering whatever happened to former Mav brickwall and Miami Heat undrafted rookie find Terry Davis ...

Aside from the San Antonio and Memphis debacles, and to a lesser degree the Cleveland and New Orleans mishaps, there is no doubt the Mavericks bring a completely different energy to road games. Surely they’ll get their act together at the AAC, right?

Miami’s second quarter shot chart indicates they weren’t going to settle for the jumpers they missed in the first quarter. Then they went ahead and resorted back to their first quarter habits and missed a bunch in the second half -- for kicks I suppose ...

I often hear some fans/observers whining about J.J. Barea’s workload. He’s certainly had some off games this year. But even in games where he’s not as productive from a box score perspective as he was tonight, he still gives you the value of offensive pressure. For a team like the Mavs, that is extremely valuable. I feel like a lot of folks just don’t appreciate that. He certainly appreciates getting starts as he’s had back-to-back games of very tangible impact in that starting backcourt ...

Joel Anthony will eat your shot ...

If Erick Dampier made mid-level exception money he’d be very highly regarded in this town. Then again if 20 and 17 were regular occurrences he’d be one of the most revered athletes in DFW history no matter how big the contract was ...

The Heat sure have shown amazing dedication to Dorell Wright. Seems to be the exact same player he was three years ago when they were hoping he’d really turn into something. I realize there are some injuries in his past, but he’s one of those guys that you barely notice is in the game. He’s the basketball equivalent of an extra ...

I’m just ecstatic that Shawn Marion’s ankle tweak ended up being minor enough for him to return. After watching Marion have success checking Joe Johnson, Amare Stoudemire and Dwayne Wade for stretches during the last seven days, I’d have to say having the Matrix in the mix is a big-time positive ...

Udonis Haslem has an absurd level of confidence against the Mavericks ...

JET did an outstanding job distributing the ball tonight. Especially off the dribble, which isn’t one of his strengths ...

I do wish Dirk (38:24) and J Kidd (36:44) could’ve played fewer minutes with Charlotte rolling into town tomorrow night ...

While watching the FSN half-time report, I’m reminded of how Dana Larson is so money. Sometimes working sports gals feel compelled to go out of their way to let you know how much they know about sports. Dana never does that because she knows her stuff and knows she doesn’t have to prove herself. She’s just good. She’s also unflappable during behind-the-scenes chaos. Big up all-area Dana Larsons ...

Looking at the fan voting so far with T-Mac as a starting guard in the West is humorous. Is that part of the Yao-Chinese population impact? I promise you the Rockets would love to showcase McGrady’s enormous expiring at All-Star weekend instead of having him screw up their team chemistry to do it ...

Oh yeah, D-Wade was in the house tonight. 28/11/5 apparently equaled no big deal ...

And then there was the guy who was convinced it was actually Bennett Salvatore who’d been threatened by the Gambino Crime Family ...