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ESPNDallas.com will estimate the market value for each of the Mavericks' eight free agents and examine their worth to the Mavs in a once-per-day series.

O.J. Mayo

After opting out of the second year of his contract, O.J. Mayo declared that he hoped to sign a long-term deal to stay in Dallas.

Coach Rick Carlisle, who had vented his frustration with Mayo just a few days earlier, made it clear that he’d welcome the shooting guard back.

“I like O.J. a lot,” Carlisle said. “I think he fits into what we’re doing. Like everything else in this world, this is probably going to come down to money.”

In relative terms, there wasn’t much of a market for Mayo last summer, when the former third overall pick hit free agency after struggling as a sixth man during his final two seasons in Memphis. He took a little less money to come to the Mavs, hoping that a year of work with Carlisle would boost his value.

We’ll see this summer whether that happened after a hot-and-cold season for Mayo that ended with an icy stretch.

The Mavs won’t break the bank to keep Mayo. They consider him capable of starting for a contender, but they don’t view him as a cornerstone player.

If Dallas doesn’t keep Mayo, the Mavs will have to address a major hole in the lineup. He led the Mavs in points, was second in scoring and second in assists.

But the free agent market will be flooded with starting-caliber shooting guards. Reasonably priced alternatives could include Monta Ellis, J.J. Redick, Kevin Martin, Tyreke Evans, Randy Foye, Tony Allen and Nick Young. (Not listed due to price/probability of staying with their current contenders: J.R. Smith, Manu Ginobili and Andre Iguodala.)

2012-13 stats: Averaged 15.3 points, 4.4 assists, 3.5 rebounds, 1.1 steals and 2.6 turnovers in 35.5 minutes per game. Shot 44.9 percent from the floor and 40.7 percent from 3-point range.

Age: 25

Comps:

DeMar DeRozan – Averaged 18.1 points, 2.5 assists, 3.9 rebounds, 0.9 steals and 1.8 turnovers in 36.7 minutes per game. Shot 44.5 percent from the floor and 28.3 percent from 3-point range. Signed four-year, $38 million deal in 2012.

Jamal Crawford – Averaged 16.5 points, 2.5 assists, 1.7 rebounds, 1.0 steals and 1.9 turnovers in 29.3 minutes per game. Shot 43.8 percent from the floor and 37.6 percent from 3-point range. Signed four-year, $21.4 million deal in 2012.

Eric Gordon – Averaged 17.0 points, 3.3 assists, 1.8 rebounds, 1.1 steals and 2.8 turnovers in 30.1 minutes per game. Shot 40.2 percent from the floor and 32.4 percent from 3-point range. Signed four-year, $58 million deal in 2012.

Joe Johnson – Averaged 16.3 points, 3.5 assists, 3.0 rebounds, 0.7 steals and 1.7 turnovers in 36.7 minutes per game. Shot 42.3 percent from the floor and 37.5 percent from 3-point range. Signed six-year, $123.7 million deal in 2010.

Arron Afflalo – Averaged 16.5 points, 3.2 assists, 3.7 rebounds, 0.6 steals and 2.2 turnovers in 36.0 minutes per game. Shot 43.9 percent from the floor and 30.0 percent from 3-point range. Signed five-year, $38 million deal in 2011.

Wesley Matthews – Averaged 14.8 points, 2.5 assists, 2.8 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 1.6 turnovers in 34.8 minutes per game. Shot 43.6 percent from the floor and 39.8 percent from 3-point range. Signed five-year, $26.8 million deal in 2010.

Estimated contract: How many millions did Mayo cost himself by struggling down the stretch? At the All-Star break, it appeared that Mayo might get a four-year deal in the $40 million range. Now, $25 million over four years sounds more likely. The Mavs might not want to go above the midlevel exception (four years, $21.4 million).

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.

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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.

 

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.

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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.

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.

DALLAS -- All due respect to Dirk Nowitzki, but he’s not the Mavericks veteran owner Mark Cuban is most sympathetic toward after the team failed to qualify for the playoffs.

Cuban feels worse for Vince Carter, who signed a three-year deal worth a little more than $9 million with the then-defending champions because he desperately wanted a chance to compete for a championship near the end of his potential Hall of Fame career. The 36-year-old Carter has been a tremendous bargain for the Mavs, although he’ll enter the last season of his contract with a grand total of zero playoff wins in Dallas.

“Vince is a warrior,” Cuban said before Friday’s game. “All these things I’ve heard in the past about him being soft and not playing hard, f--- that. That dude comes out to deliver every f---ing night.”

Case in point: Carter’s spectacular outing in Dallas’ 108-105 overtime win over the Denver Nuggets. In the Mavs’ first game after being eliminated from playoff contention, Carter put up 22 points, 12 rebounds, seven assists, two blocked shots and a steal in 34 max-effort minutes.

It was a performance that epitomized the pride and professionalism that Carter, an eight-time All-Star who had a bad rap for being a bit of a prima donna before signing with the Mavs, has consistently displayed during his time in Dallas.

It’s the kind of performance that has Cuban convinced that Carter, whose .500 beard has several gray strands, is a keeper even after his contract expires next summer.

“He’s just a first-class guy who busts his ass every f---ing game," Cuban said. "You never look at Vince and say he’s taking a play off. He’s taking charges. ... You guys talk about doing it for Dirk; doing it for Vince is just as important.

“He just wants to compete and win, period, end of story. All the s--- I heard from the past, I don’t know where that came from. I’m proud that he’s on the Mavericks. The guy lays it out every time. I can’t put it any other way. He’s one of those guys I want to retire here.”

Carter, who is averaging 13.3 points per game and playing outstanding defense in his first season as a sixth man, broke into a big smile after being informed of Cuban’s comments, particularly the part about signing him to another contract.

“That’s why he’s my guy,” Carter said, laughing. “That’s why he’s my guy. I worked my butt off this summer for a lot of reasons, just to prove that I’m still capable at this tender age, and I think he appreciates that. He’s a fiery guy, very passionate about the game, as we all know. That’s what he looks for.

“Just coming in and seeing what he’s all about, he’s a great owner to work for, just for the simple fact that he just wants to win. That’s kind of how I approach the game. I just want to win. For the people who don’t know me or didn’t know me before, I think now they’re starting to understand.

“Yeah, I can put the ball in the basket or whatever, but I just want to win and see my team succeed. It’s just great that it’s appreciated by the top dog.”

When he came to Dallas, fresh off playing for three teams in three seasons, Carter had a lot to prove. He wanted to show he still had a lot of game at his advanced age, and he wanted to eliminate any doubt that winning was his top priority.

Carter promised to do whatever the Mavs needed him to do to help them win, regardless of position or role. He’s done that, accepting the sixth-man job and playing the majority of his minutes at small forward.

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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

He promised to play as hard as possible every minute he was on the floor. He’s done that, as evidenced by his leading the team in charges drawn by a wide margin.

“I’ve prided myself on being one of the older guys that wanted to play every game possible and go harder than everybody out there,” Carter said. “They do go hard, but for me, I just want to compete at the same level as the younger guys and set the example. We want that to be the way of life around here.”

Carter has more than held up his end of the bargain for the past two seasons, disappointing as they’ve been from a team standpoint.

As far as Cuban is concerned, Carter has a bright future around here.

How it happened: Playing for nothing but pride, the Mavericks pulled out a down-to-the-wire win over the playoff-bound Nuggets.

a href="http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/3450/oj-mayo">O.J. Mayo hit a tie-breaking 3 with 34.1 seconds remaining in regulation, but he played a major role in the Nuggets' getting a shot at overtime.

Andre Miller stripped Mayo near midcourt and dished to Corey Brewer for the layup to even the score with 3.9 seconds to go. On the ensuing possession, Mayo drove down the lane but missed an open finger roll at the buzzer.

Mayo redeemed himself with five points in overtime, including a 3 that gave the Mavs the lead for good with 2:40 remaining. He finished with 20 points, the first time he's scored that many since March 8.

Darren Collison hit a couple of clutch free throws with 1.9 ticks on the clock. Andre Iguodala, who hit the game-winning layup against Dallas last week in Denver, missed a contested 30-footer at the buzzer to seal the win for the Mavs.

The Mavs got magnificent performances from the veteran trio that is the core of this team currently and for the immediate future. Vince Carter (22 points, 12 rebounds, 7 assists) and Dirk Nowitzki (22 points, 10 rebounds) had double-doubles, and Shawn Marion added 15 points and eight rebounds.

What it means: The Mavs (39-40) are back to within a win of getting rid of those .500 beards. Their post-playoff-elimination goal of finishing the season with a winning record is still alive. The Nuggets (54-25) are tied with the Memphis Grizzlies in the fight for the West’s third seed, with the loser destined to drop to No. 5 behind the Pacific Division champion Los Angeles Clippers.

Play of the game: Carter drew two Denver defenders on a fast break and lobbed the ball up to Brandan Wright, who soared high above the rim to finish with two hands. That North Carolina connection gave the Mavs a 69-63 with a little less than four minutes remaining in the third quarter.

Stat of the night: Nowitzki is 10 points shy of 25,000 for his career. He’ll be the 17th player in NBA history to hit that milestone.

A fistful of statistical dribbles to set up the Mavericks home date with Denver on Friday night:

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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

As badly as he was hoping to shave late Wednesday night -- only to be foiled by what he described as a “terrible, terrible” loss to Phoenix -- Dirk Nowitzki is playing for something else Friday night: He’s 32 points shy of 25,000 for his career. When he gets there, Dirk will be the 17th member of the 25,000-point club.

Denver has officially supplanted the Mavs as the team with the league's second-longest active playoff streak. This season marks the Nuggets’ 10th straight in the postseason, behind only San Antonio’s 16 in a row.

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The Nuggets, however, have only advanced past the first round once in those previous nine trips to the playoffs. In 2009, Denver made it to the Western Conference finals, beating Dallas in five games in the second round along with way.

Denver arrives in town having become just the second team in history to sweep all three teams from Texas on the same homestand. Phoenix did it in November 2000, and the Nuggets beat Dallas, Houston and San Antonio -- in that order -- earlier this month.

Denver’s JaVale McGee shoots 50.5 percent from the field at home and a whopping 62.6 percent on the road. That’s the league’s biggest such discrepancy, with Mavs alumnus Jason Terry suffering from the opposite sort of gap at 48.7 percent from the field at home in Boston and 37.7 percent on the road.

How it happened: The Mavericks have a new worst-loss-of-the-season front-runner.

The Phoenix Suns limped into the American Airlines Center with the West’s worst record and a 10-game losing streak. They left with a victory over a Dallas team whose fate seems to be to fail to reach .500 for the rest of the season.

The Suns had runs of 21-4, 16-3 and 12-0. The last of those runs came in response to the Mavs' storming out of halftime to erase a 10-point deficit.

Dallas, which got into the bonus with 8:29 remaining in the fourth quarter, managed to trim the deficit to four with a couple of minutes to play but never got any closer. Phoenix’s P.J. Tucker hit the dagger 3 from the corner with 1:01 remaining to push the Suns’ lead back to nine.

Tucker was one of six Suns to score in double figures. Point guard Goran Dragic led Phoenix with 21 points and 13 assists, slicing through the Dallas defense on pick-and-roll plays all night.

The Mavs had only three players score in double figures against one of the NBA’s softest defensive squads -- Shawn Marion (22), Dirk Nowitzki (21) and Vince Carter (18).

What it means: The Mavs’ .500 beards will keep on growing while Dallas’ playoff hopes hang by a thread that could be snipped if the Los Angeles Lakers win in Portland late Wednesday night. The Suns improved to 24-55.

Play of the game: Suns center Jermaine O’Neal hit a midrange jumper early in the fourth quarter to extend the Suns’ lead to 14. It was a pretty ordinary play, but O’Neal’s celebration while jogging down the floor was extraordinary. He smacked Rick Carlisle on the rear as he ran by. Carlisle, who coached O’Neal in Indiana, did not appear to be amused.

Stat of the night: The Suns snapped two 10-game losing streaks. They had lost their previous 10 games overall and their previous 10 games at the American Airlines Center. The latter streak dated to March 14, 2007.

DENVER -- The miserable feeling the Dallas Mavericks had in the mile-high altitude is far too familiar.

Add this to the long list of games the Mavs figured out how to lose.

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In this instance, the Mavs put themselves into position to pull off a huge upset only to fail to finish the job. The Denver Nuggets led for a grand total of 2.8 seconds in the second half Thursday night and walked out of the Pepsi Center with their 19th consecutive home win.

After leading by as many as eight points early in the fourth quarter, the Mavs were clinging to a one-point lead in the final minute. At that point, the Mavs had a well-rounded meltdown.

Poor offensive execution? Check. Poor spacing helped cause a Dirk Nowitzki turnover with 19.9 seconds remaining, and rarely used reserve Anthony Morrow, of all people, ended up jacking up a wanna-be game-winning shot at the buzzer, only to have the 25-footer swatted by Corey Brewer.

Awful rebounding? Check. The Nuggets extended their last possession with two offensive rebounds, giving Denver 18 offensive boards for the game. Allowing Brewer to come from above the top of the key to grab a missed free throw was especially costly -- and inexcusable -- for the Mavs.

Terrible defense? Check. Andre Iguodala cruised to the rim after crossing over Vince Carter en route to the game-winning layup.

“We’ve got to win that game,” said Mavs center Brandan Wright, who had a team-high 16 points but went scoreless in the second half. “This is a bad situation. It’s been the story of our season. This is terrible, the worst loss we’ve had all year. We had it and we just fumbled it away.”

The worst loss all year? That’s debatable for the 36-39 Mavs.

The Mavs have been on the wrong end of too many blowouts, but it’s games such as this that will bother them while they’re watching the playoffs from the couch. As Carter said, he doesn’t have enough fingers to count how many times the Mavs have found ways to lose games they should have won.

“There’s gotta be 20 of those games we lost,” said Nowitzki, who was held to 13 points and went scoreless in the fourth quarter. “It stings just as much as all the rest of them. The amount of games we feel like we gave away is tough. This is another one we’ve got to have -- multiple chances to win, basically one rebound to seal it, one big basket. It’s tough.

“It’s tough, but we haven’t shown all season that on the road consistently we can win those games.”

Shawn Marion described the Mavs’ offense as “going from sugar to s---” in the fourth quarter, during which the Mavs scored only 17 points on 7-of-19 shooting. But it’s Denver’s last, long offensive possession that will make the flight to Sacramento so miserable.

After Brewer’s steal, the Nuggets botched a transition opportunity, resulting in Wilson Chandler missing a 4-footer in traffic. Denver forward Kenneth Faried fought for his 19th rebound of the night and got fouled. The Mavs still led by one after Faried missed both of his free throws, but Brewer outhustled everybody to the loose ball to give the Nuggets one last chance.

“We didn’t execute well offensively, and I’ll take responsibility for that,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “But we’ve just got to get a rebound.”

After a timeout, Iguodala made the Mavs pay for failing to get that one rebound. Iguodala got the ball on the right wing, started to drive toward the baseline, left Carter flat-footed with a crossover, cruised through the middle of the defense and laid in the game winner with his left hand.

“We’ve got to make Iguodala earn that,” Carter said. “We can’t just let him go down the middle of our defense and get a layup. We’ve got to put him on the floor, foul him, something.”

Added Nowitzki, who noted that he could have hacked Iguodala: “To give up a game-winning layup is too easy.”

If the Mavs get that one rebound, nobody cares that the Dallas offense was dreadful down the stretch. The Mavs would have been celebrating their most surprising win of the season en route to Sacramento.

“One freakin’ stop,” Carter said, “and we’re having a different conversation.”

Instead, it was the same conversation the Mavs have had so many times during this disappointing season.

How it happened: The Dallas Mavericks’ bid to snap the Denver Nuggets’ long home winning streak flopped in the final seconds.

Denver’s Andre Iguodala drove for the game-winning layup with 2.8 seconds remaining. Dallas’ Anthony Morrow, a rarely used reserve, had his 3-pointer at the buzzer blocked by Corey Brewer.

Brewer, whom the Mavs dealt to Denver along with Rudy Fernandez in a salary-dump deal before last season, came up big against his former team. Brewer scored 23 points off the bench, stepping up his offensive game after small forward Danilo Gallinari suffered a potentially serious knee injury in the second quarter, and made three clutch plays in the final minute.

First, Brewer came up with a steal on a Dirk Nowitzki spin move when the Mavs had a one-point lead. Brewer’s offensive rebound on the ensuing possession made Iguodala’s game winner possible. And Brewer sealed the Nuggets’ 19th straight home win with the block.

The Nuggets held Nowitzki to 13 points, none of which came in the fourth quarter. Center Brandan Wright led the Mavs with 16 points, but he was shut out in the second half.

The Nuggets played without point guard Ty Lawson, their leading scorer, but Andre Miller filled the void with 22 points and seven assists. Denver power forward Kenneth Faried added 12 points and 19 rebounds.

Iguodala had only eight points on 3-of-13 shooting, but he hit a big 3 with 4:40 remaining and the game-winning bucket.

The Mavs failed to score after Vince Carter’s jumper with 2:05 remaining.

What it means: The Mavs’ slim playoff hopes took another hit. Dallas dropped to 36-39 after its second consecutive loss to begin this four-game road trip, falling three games behind the eighth-place Los Angeles Lakers, who own the tie-breaker. The Nuggets (52-24) held on to third place in the West standings.

Play of the game: Iguodala slashed through the middle of the Dallas defense, beating Vince Carter with a crossover move and finishing with a left-handed layup with 2.8 seconds remaining for the game-winning bucket.

Stat of the night: The Mavs are 2-14 on the road against the teams above them in the West standings.

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently said that he would consider selecting Brittney Griner in the second round of the NBA Draft.

Could Griner play in the NBA? Would it be wise for the Mavericks to use a second-round pick on the Baylor women’s basketball superstar?

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Mavericks don't draft well

Since Cuban became majority owner of the Mavericks in 2000, their 22 draft picks have combined to make just one All-Star appearance -- Josh Howard, a first-round selection in 2003 who played in the NBA ASG in 2007.

In fact, Howard's visit is the only All-Star appearance by any of the Mavericks' 35 draft picks since 1995.

Since 1995, the Mavericks are the only NBA franchise whose second-round draft picks have fewer than two combined career All-Star appearances (other than the Bobcats, whose first season was 2004).

Let's take a look at the Mavericks' second-round picks in the Cuban era:

Darius Johnson-Odom (2012): Four career games, zero career points

Targuy Ngombo (2011): Never played in NBA

Solomon Alabi (2010): 26 career games, 39 career points

Ahmad Nivins (2009): Never played in NBA

Shan Foster (2008): Never played in NBA

Milovan Rakovic (2007): Never played in NBA

Renaldas Seibutis (2007): Never played in NBA

Nick Fazekas (2007): 26 career games, 107 career points

J.R. Pinnock (2006): Never played in NBA

Vassilis Spanoulis (2004): 31 career games, 85 career points

Xue Yuyang (2003): Never played in NBA

Mladen Sekularac (2002): Never played in NBA

Kyle Hill (2001): Never played in NBA

Kenny Satterfield (2001): 75 career games, 321 career points

Dan Langhi (2000): 133 career games, 393 career points

Pete Mickael (2000): Never played in NBA

Since 2000, the Mavericks' 16 second-round picks have a combined 295 career games and 945 career points.

These second-round picks were technically selected by other teams, but acquired by the Mavericks in draft-day deals:

Jae Crowder (2012): 70 games and scored 378 points

Bernard James (2012): 43 games and scored 129 points

Eduardo Najera (2000): 3,052 points in 619 career games

The success rate for second-round picks isn't very high league-wide. From 2000 to 2011, only 30 percent (108 of 356) of second-round picks have played at least 100 career games in the NBA.

Griner dominated college game

Griner has 18 career dunks, more than every other woman combined in Division I history. Griner dunked three times in one game, while Candace Parker is the only other woman to dunk more than three times in her entire college career.

Griner is the most efficient player in women's college basketball. She led the country in points per post-up play and points per play overall this season.

Of course, men's college basketball is a completely different game than Griner's competition. But for what it's worth, nobody in men's college basketball averaged as many points per play (1.14) as Griner averaged on post-ups this season (minimum 150 plays).

Griner held opponents to 0.56 points per play and 23 percent shooting as an on-ball defender this season, both of which led the country (minimum 275 plays).

If Griner posted those same numbers in men's college basketball, she would've led the country in points per post-up plays, points per play allowed and opponent field-goal percentage.

Wouldn't be the first woman to be drafted

If Griner were to be selected, she wouldn't be the first woman ever chosen in the NBA Draft. In 1969, Denise Long was selected in the 13th round by the San Francisco Warriors. Long was a high school player who averaged 62.8 points per game during her senior year. However, the NBA later voided the selection because they felt it was a publicity stunt.

In 1977, Lusia Harris was selected in the seventh round by the New Orleans Jazz. The Delta State star officially became the only woman ever picked in the NBA Draft, although she never actually played in an NBA game.

The Dallas Mavericks, as promised, are bringing in another guard in for a 10-day look as they continue to evaluate backcourt prospects for the future while trying to cling to life in the race for the West's final playoff berth.

Sources told ESPN.com that the Mavs on Thursday will sign Josh Akognon to a 10-day deal. The high-scoring sharpshooter from Cal State Fullerton went to training camp with the Mavs but ended up returning to China to play for Liaoning when he was Dallas' final cut before opening-night rosters were finalized.

Akognon is meeting the team in Colorado, sources said, in advance of the Mavs' game Thursday against the Denver Nuggets. The 5-foot-11 combo guard averaged nearly 30 points per game in China this season and will take the roster spot of Justin Dentmon, who was informed after Tuesday night's loss to the Lakers he wouldn't be receiving a second 10-day deal.

The Mavs, though, had always planned to audition one more guard after previously giving 10-day trials to Dentmon and fellow D-League star Chris Wright.

Dentmon, MVP of the D-League in 2011-12, was called up from the Texas Legends in nearby Frisco and appeared in two Mavs games for a total of four minutes. Dentmon earned call-ups with the San Antonio Spurs and Toronto Raptors last season.

Wright joined the Mavericks last month from the Iowa Energy and became the first player in league history to appear in the NBA while diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

The Mavs will have three games left in the regular season after Akognon's 10-day contract expires, but it is not yet known if they plan to sign a fourth guard to a 10-day deal before the end of the season.