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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 -- O.J. Mayo's role for the final game didn't change. Neither has Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle's belief in the 25-year-old shooting guard despite the coach's emotional postgame criticism of Mayo after Monday's loss to Memphis.

Mayo started the season finale against the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday, just like he had the Mavs' other 81 games this season.

"He'll come out of this a much better and more experienced player," Carlisle told ESPN Dallas 103.3's Chuck Cooperstein in a pregame interview. "My feelings about him haven't changed."

Carlisle's on-the-record opinion about Mayo is that he can be a starter on a contender.

That was the Mavs' hope when they signed Mayo last summer to a contract that includes a $4.2 million player option for next season. Mayo has averaged 15.4 point and 4.4 assists while leading the Mavs in minutes during his up-and-down season.

Mayo also led the Mavs in tough love received by Carlisle, whose ability to develop players was one of the primary reasons Mayo signed with the Mavs.

The amount of time Carlisle invested in Mayo was one of the primary reasons the coach was so bluntly honest about his disappointment Monday night. Carlisle called the criticism -- which featured him saying Mayo "failed to compete" against his former team -- "a little out of character for me."

"I've spent so much time with him, I really feel like a Little League parent," Carlisle said. "So when there's an opportunity for him to step up, I really want to see him do well."

Mayo said earlier in the day he was not aware of Carlisle’s criticism of him following Monday’s game.

"Well, I don’t blame him," Mayo said after Wednesday’s shootaround when apprised of Carlisle’s comments.

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.

Shooting guard O.J. Mayo, the subject of coach Rick Carlisle’s public wrath after Monday’s loss to the Memphis Grizzlies, wants to return to Dallas next season.

“Yeah, I’d like to be back here,” Mayo told reporters after Wednesday’s final shootaround of the season.

Mayo, however, said he has yet to consider whether he will exercise the player option for the second season in the contract he signed with the Mavericks last season. Mayo can opt to make a $4.2 million salary from the Mavs next season, or he can decide to test the free agency market for the second consecutive summer, perhaps signing a long-term deal with Dallas.

“I haven’t really sat down and talked to Cuban about it or my agent,” said Mayo, who has averaged 15.4 points and 4.4 assists while playing a team-high 35.6 minutes per game this season. “I think I’ll probably take a week or so off after this season and get together and meet.”

Midway through the season, it appeared that it’d be an easy decision for Mayo to test the market again. He averaged 17.9 points per game while shooting career-best percentages before the All-Star break.

But Mayo’s production has dipped drastically in the second half of the season. He’s averaging only 9.0 points per game on 38.9 percent shooting in eight April games.

Carlisle, who has made Mayo somewhat of a pet project since last summer, sounded like a disappointed parent when he called out Mayo for failing to compete in Monday’s loss. Carlisle called a timeout midway through the fourth quarter specifically to bench Mayo, who had two points and four turnovers in the loss.

Mayo claimed Wednesday that he hadn’t heard about Carlisle’s postgame criticism, which dominated the media discussion about the Mavs over the last 36 hours.

"Well, I don’t blame him," Mayo said when informed of Carlisle’s comments.

Carlisle kept his comments about Mayo brief after the final shootaround of the season: "He's ready to go. He's ready to go."

 

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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"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 -- 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.

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.

DALLAS – The O.J. Mayo clutch roller coaster can be one heck of a wild ride.

The Mavs survived the crazy twists and turns and highs and lows Friday night.

Start with Mayo drilling a tie-breaking 3-pointer from the right wing with 34.1 seconds remaining in regulation. If that leads holds up, Mayo is a relative hero.

Oh, but then that iffy basketball IQ owner Mark Cuban was discussing in team-wide terms popped up with less than 10 seconds on the clock. Mayo allowed Denver’s Andre Miller to strip the ball from behind, leading to an uncontested, game-tying layup by Corey Brewer with 3.9 seconds left.

Mayo had his chance to win it at the buzzer, driving down the lane for a finger roll … that rolled right off the rim.

“You’ve just got to understand that there’s still more game left,” Mayo said. “You can’t sit there and dwell on turning the ball over. Obviously, I didn’t mean to do it, but it happened, they got a layup and took the game into overtime.”

O.J. made it all good in OT.

Mayo scored the Mavs’ first two buckets of the extra frame, including a 3-pointer that gave them the lead for good with 2:40 to go. That put the finishing touches on his first 20-point performance in more than a month, prompting Dirk Nowitzki to declare that he was “proud” of Mayo.

“That’s what you look for with guys,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “Mistakes are going to happen, but who can make a mistake and then bounce right back and hit two or three shots in overtime, get a key deflection and just stay in it?

“That’s one of the things he’s learned; he’s learned about how to stick with it and how to keep going. I was really happy for him because it was a rough 10 seconds there at the end.”

A few more notes from the feisty Mavs’ win:

1. Dirk’s 25K delayed: Nowitzki scored 22 points, giving him 24,990 for his career. That left him thinking about Sunday’s win in Portland, when he scored only six points and didn’t play in the fourth quarter due to a minor ankle injury.

“Tonight would have been the night,” Nowitzki said. “Obviously, it would have been nicer to do it at home, but it is what it is. I think it’s a great milestone and eventually I’m going to get it.

“It’ll be a fun milestone to get, but more important to me is to finish the season strong, get a couple of wins and hopefully finish the season above .500.”

2. Collison’s closing touch: How confident were the Mavs when Darren Collison stepped to the line with 1.9 seconds left in overtime? Probably 100 percent.

That’s Collison’s free throw percentage in the final 30 seconds of games when the margin is within three points. He’s 15-of-15 in those situations, including 13-of-13 in the final 10 seconds under similar circumstances.

3. Brand back: Off-the-bench big man Elton Brand returned after missing the previous four games with a sore right calf. He had two points, four rebounds and two blocks in 14 minutes.

DENVER – What happened to one of the great closers in NBA history during the fourth quarter of Thursday’s down-to-the-wire loss?

Dirk Nowitzki essentially disappeared on the offensive end in the final dozen minutes.

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Nowitzki didn’t score a single point in the final frame of the 95-94 loss to the Nuggets. He attempted only two shots in the quarter. His biggest impact play was a turnover with 19.9 seconds left.

What did the Nuggets do to shut down Dirk?

“Just front me in the post,” said Nowitzki, who finished the game with 13 points on 6-of-10 shooting. “I did have one catch down there and shot a fadeaway. I should have made a stronger move than that. Other than that, just front me, backside help. That was really about it.”

Not coincidentally, the Mavs’ offense was miserable in the fourth quarter, scoring only 17 points on 7-of-19 shooting.

Nowitzki got one really good look … and somehow airballed a straightway 3 with 10:33 remaining. He didn’t get another shot until his failed fadeaway with 46.8 seconds to go.

Coach Rick Carlisle tried to give Dirk a chance to deliver the dagger, but that turned into disaster. With the Mavs clinging to a one-point lead, Dallas ran an isolation play for Nowitzki near the top of the key, but ex-Mav Corey Brewer swiped the ball when Nowitzki made a spin move.

“I thought actually I could quick dribble it and spin before Brewer gets the ball,” Nowitzki said. “I saw him right there, but as soon as I put it down, he’s so quick. That’s what he does. He dove in there and got his hands on it. At that point, probably the wrong move. It was so clogged, the only thing I had was just the spot-up shot. I probably should have just shot over him.”

It was clogged because the Mavs had poor spacing on the play. Instead of overloading one side to give Dirk room to work, the Mavs had two players on each side of the court.

“That’s on me,” Carlisle said. “It’s a case of, yeah, we always want to get him the ball when we can. When we can’t, he affects the game in a way that helps other guys get shots. That’s when we need other guys to step up.”

Nowitzki was not involved in the play when the Mavs had a chance to win the game on the final possession, standing on the opposite side of the court while Anthony Morrow’s desperation 3-pointer got blocked.

A few more notes from yet another frustrating Mavs loss:

1. Final failure: With 2.8 seconds remaining and the Mavs trailing by one, Carlisle didn’t want rarely used reserve Anthony Morrow shooting a contested 3-pointer off the dribble. That’s what happened, with Brewer blocking Morrow’s shot.

What did Carlisle want in that situation?

“Not what happened,” Carlisle said. “Again, I’m responsible for that. That’s as far as I’m going to go with it.”

Nowitzki, who had a nice view from the opposite side of the court, shed some light on what was supposed to happen.

“The play was for Vince (Carter) coming off and curling to the corner, but Andre Miller was right there and took that away,” Nowitzki said. “(Morrow) ran a circle and came back up, wasn’t really free but tried to make the best out of it and got a shot up and got it blocked.”

2. Brewer’s big game: Brewer, whom the Mavs traded to Denver along with Rudy Fernandez for a 2016 second-round pick in a salary-dump deal before last season, torched his former team.

Brewer scored 23 points in 35 minutes off the bench, stepping up after small forward Danilo Gallinari suffered what appeared to be a serious knee injury in the second quarter.

Brewer also made three critical plays in the final 19.9 seconds: stealing the ball from Nowitzki, grabbing the offensive rebound to make Andre Iguodala’s game-winning drive possible and blocking Morrow’s shot.

“He’s a good player,” Nowitzki said. “You’ve got to give him credit. He played well.”

3. Foul night for Mayo: It’s never good to finish with more fouls than points. That was the case for O.J. Mayo, who matched a season low with four points and fouled out for only the fifth time in his career.

Mayo picked up his fourth foul 58 seconds after halftime and sat out the rest of the third quarter. He was whistled for his fifth foul 54 seconds into the fourth quarter and fouled out on an and-1 pull-up jumper by Andre Miller with 1:48 remaining.

“You’re going to have nights like that,” Mayo said. “You try to play hard even though you have some fouls, try to stay aggressive, but the whistles didn’t go my way tonight.”

DENVER – Coach Rick Carlisle made a reference to the Mavericks’ youth after Tuesday’s lopsided loss in a must-win game against the Lakers.

“We have some inexperienced guys who haven’t been here before, so this is a valuable learning experience for them,” Carlisle said. “But it has a price.”

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There are two problems with that statement.

The first is that the vast majority of the Mavs are playoff tested. Yes, a pair of 25-year-old guards play major minutes. But Darren Collison has 16 games of playoff experience, having helped the Pacers advance to the second round and put up a fight against the Miami Heat last season. And O.J. Mayo has 20 games of playoff experience, serving as the sixth man on a Memphis team that pushed the Oklahoma City Thunder to seven games in the West semifinals two years ago.

The only Mavs in the rotation who don’t have a healthy dose of playoff experience are rookie Jae Crowder and Brandan Wright, who watched all but 27 minutes in last season’s first-round sweep by OKC.

Crowder played a productive 16 minutes against the Lakers, scoring seven points on 3-of-3 shooting and grabbing three rebounds. Wright (plus-2 in 18 minutes) was the only Mav with a positive plus-minus in that game. In other words, they weren’t the reason the Mavs got blown out in such a big game.

The other issue with the statement is that the Mavs might not benefit from any learning experience for most of their young players. Collison, Mayo and Wright can all be free agents, making them part of the majority on the Mavs’ roster.

It’s highly unlikely that Collison returns to Dallas. He’s made it clear that he considers himself a starting point guard. Carlisle has made it clear that he sees Collison as a backup.

Mayo has a player option for $4.2 million next season, but it’s all but a certainty that he’ll test the market again this summer. What are the Mavs willing to pay to keep Mayo?

The same question applies to Wright, whose recent performances might have put him in position to get an offer similar to the one former Mavs backup center Ian Mahinmi signed with the Pacers (four years, $16 million).

Any growing pains aren’t much of a consolation prize for the Mavs.

LOS ANGELES -- Is the jumper that O.J. Mayo called “broke” after his 1-of-13 outing in Saturday’s win over the Bulls fixed?

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“It’s getting there, man,” Mayo said after Monday’s practice.

The Mavs had Easter Sunday off, but Mayo spent much of the holiday shooting in the gym. He also made a trip to Loyola Marymount to get up more shots after the Mavs arrived in Los Angeles on Monday evening, in addition to his normal post-practice and post-shootaround shooting routines.

If Mayo isn’t on against the Lakers, it won’t be due to a lack of work.

His left shoulder, however, could continue to be a negative factor. Mayo is 4-of-23 in two games since spraining the AC joint in his non-shooting shoulder while chasing a loose ball late in last week’s OT win over the Clippers.

Mayo ditched the harness he was wearing to protect the shoulder after the first quarter of Saturday’s game because he said it’s uncomfortable and affects his balance when he’s shooting. He doesn’t plan to wear it the rest of the season, although he is dealing with significant pain.

Facing the Lakers has been a major challenge for a healthy Mayo. He averaged only 11.0 points on .297 shooting -- his lowest field goal percentage against any foe other than the Bulls -- in the Mavs’ first three meetings with the Lakers.

“We all know what’s at stake,” Mayo said. “Gotta go out there and play and perform.”

DALLAS – Dirk Nowitzki declared recently that the playoffs have essentially already begun for the Dallas Mavericks.

The big German certainly has looked like postseason Dirk recently.

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There were a couple of performances last week that were reminiscent of the 2011 title run, when Nowitzki was an efficient scoring machine and clutch executioner. First, he lit the Los Angeles Clippers up for 33 points, outscoring the West contender in overtime. He followed that up a few days later by dropping 35 on the Chicago Bulls, capping the Mavs’ miraculous comeback with eight points in the final 54 seconds, including the game-winner.

Clearly, this is a case of fuel being poured on the competitive fire of a legend who is a member of the exclusive, four-man 25-point, 10-rebound career postseason club, right?

Actually, Dirk offers a much simpler explanation for his recent return to Hall of Fame form: He’s fully healthy and finally feels like himself again.

“Honestly, it’s just me starting to feel better again,” Nowitzki said. “I was struggling early. Honestly, in a normal season, I’d just be hitting my midseason form, but unfortunately this season I missed (29) games. So this season is already over.

“Instead of me playing good ball in January, February, March right now, the season is unfortunately over. I’m just feeling good again.”

This is one of the instances where the German-to-English translation isn’t entirely accurate. Nowitzki didn’t mean to suggest that Dallas is done fighting when he said the season is already over. He just meant that the regular season is nearly finished.

As Nowitzki said after the Mavs were humiliated in Houston in early March – and most of us considered the thought of Dallas extending its dozen-year postseason streak to be pure fantasy – he’s never given up on anything in his career. He’s darn sure not about to throw in the towel when the Mavs are a win away from shaving and a game and a half back of the West’s final playoff spot with a huge road game against the Los Angeles Lakers next on the schedule.

It’s far from ideal that the Mavs are in position to have to fight for a playoff berth. However, it’s a heck of a lot better than the way things looked for the Mavs after Nowitzki’s extended absence while recovering from preseason knee surgery and his miserable performance after his return.

“It’s obviously fun to always play for something,” Nowitzki said. “If we played for the 12th seed right now, it’d probably be a little different, but this way there’s still something to play for. We’re working every day for it. That’s obviously more fun."

O.J. Mayo’s perspective from the neighboring locker: “You see him really champing at the bit to get to that eighth spot, doing everything in his will to keep us in striking distance. We’ve got to do whatever we’ve got to do to give him some help.”

It’s not as if Nowitzki’s offensive explosions last week came out of nowhere. He’s one of the primary reasons the Mavs have a puncher’s chance of making the playoffs.

There were flashes of the old Dirk in February, such as his 30-point, 13-rebound showing in a losing effort against the Lakers.

March was by far Nowitzki’s best month of the season, as he averaged 20.0 points while making 53.3 percent of his shots from the floor, including 48.3 percent from 3-point range. Not coincidentally, the Mavs went 11-5 to climb back into the bottom of the West playoff picture.

It’s a far cry from Dirk’s dreadful December, when he rushed back despite his rehab not going well and scored a total of 30 points on 32.4 percent shooting in his first four games, all losses.

“It’s just I feel night and day difference since I came back,” Nowitzki said. “I was dragging. Every step, it wasn’t fun running up and down, and that’s obviously a problem. But I like running again, I like moving, I like getting into the shot, bending my knees. It’s a matter of feeling good again and trying to help the team win.

“It’s sad when you’re out there and your mind wants to make moves in December and January and your body just doesn’t respond right. When you can’t do those moves, that’s just sad. I’m just happy that when my mind sees something now in a split second … and my body’s able to respond and do that move.”

Nowitzki has been an efficient scorer since the All-Star break. However, he’s only recently gotten back to being the no-doubt closer who demands the ball during crunch time and delivers.

That’s proof that he’s broken free of the physical and mental burdens that slowed him for much of this season.

“He’s been battling injuries and people have been saying he’s not the same or whatever,” Brandan Wright said. “But he’s definitely back.”

Too late or just in time?

DALLAS – Coach Rick Carlisle couldn’t stop raving about one of his starters after Saturday’s stunning comeback win over the Chicago Bulls.

No, it wasn’t Dirk Nowitzki, the dude who scored eight of his season-high-tying 35 points in the final 54 seconds, including the game-winning bucket.

Carlisle kept gushing about how proud he was of O.J. Mayo, the guy who finished the game with four points on 1-of-13 shooting.

“Here’s a guy who is banged up, and I just thought he was totally engaged in the game and did a lot of things even though he didn’t shoot the ball well,” Carlisle said. “If we’re going to get where we want to get in the next nine games, the example that he set out there today is really important.

“That’s just grit and guts – being totally in and totally committed.”

Mayo is playing through the pain of a sprained AC joint in his left shoulder, an injury suffered on a hustle play late in Tuesday’s win over the Clippers and diagnosed by an MRI on Friday. He’s the only Maverick who has played in every game this season.

Mayo played with a harness protecting the shoulder during Thursday’s loss to the Pacers but ditched the restrictive device after the first quarter Saturday afternoon.

“I just said, to heck with it, and just tried to play without it,” said Mayo, whose only bucket was a big one, a driving layup to trim the deficit to six with 1:44 remaining. “If your shot is broke, you at least want to shoot it comfortably. You want to be comfortable shooting a broke shot. You don’t want to be uncomfortable shooting a broke shot.

“But, hey, it was a great win, a win we needed. I’ll get in the gym tomorrow and try to fix that break in my shot and keep playing hard.”

Easter Sunday is officially a day off for the Mavs, but Mayo has work to do.

There’s not much Mayo or the Mavs’ medical staff can do to ease the pain in his shoulder before Tuesday’s critical game against the Lakers.

“It is what it is,” Mayo said. “You’ve got to deal with it. I can still walk, run and communicate out there, so whatever it takes to help us win.”

Mayo managed to help the Mavs win despite an awful shooting outing Saturday, which is why his coach kept praising him.

A few more notes from the Mavs’ thrilling comeback win:

1. Wright big off bench: Brandan Wright’s streak of starting ended after four games, with Elton Brand replacing him in the lineup. Wright responded with his first double-double in a Dallas uniform.

Wright scored 17 points on 7-of-8 shooting and grabbed a career-high-tying 13 rebounds in 23 minutes against the Bulls.

“No matter who starts, when you get an opportunity to play your minutes, just play them to the best of your ability,” Wright said. “That’s what it’s been about the whole year. I know it’s been a revolving door at the center position. We know what to do when we get in the game.”

Wright’s last double-double came on April 1, 2011, when his New Jersey Nets lost to the Philadelphia 76ers. Wright noted that the lottery-bound Nets were simply playing out the string at that point.

“This one means much more,” Wright said. “We’re playing for something.”

Wright’s emergence is part of the reason the Mavs are playing for something. After being in and out of the rotation all season, Wright averaged 11.6 points and 6.1 rebounds in 24.4 minutes per game in March, when the Mavs went 11-5.

2. ‘Like a video game’: It appeared early in the fourth quarter that Nate Robinson was going to hog the headlines after this game.

Chicago’s backup point guard caught fire, going on a personal 11-2 run after the Mavs and Bulls entered the fourth quarter tied. Then Robinson drilled a 32-footer, pulling up from near the midcourt logo after tracking down a loose ball with the shot clock ticking down, giving him 14 of his 25 points in span of six minutes.

“He was so on fire that it was almost like a video game,” said Nowitzki, who went into video-game mode down the stretch.

Robinson was 9-of-16 from the floor and 7-of-7 from 3-point range, but his last bucket was that 32-footer. He missed his last two shots, including a jumper at the buzzer that could have sent the game into overtime.

Give Mike James a lot of the credit for cooling off Robinson.

“My teammates looked at me and said, ‘Look, stop asking for help on that screen. Turn that water hose off,’” James said.

3. Rally cry: The Mavs get a day off before leaving for a huge four-game road trip. That trip begins with a must-win game Tuesday night against the Los Angeles Lakers before a Thursday date in Denver against the Nuggets and their West-best 33-3 home record.

“Regardless of who the opponents are coming up, it’s just important that we continue to fight and battle and stick together,” Carlisle said. “That’s the rally cry.”