NBA scores 2017: The zombie Mavericks are refusing to die again

We keep thinking this is the year Dallas will blow up. Another year in, and once again the Mavericks are fighting back to .500.

by Tim Cato

Feb 10, 2017, 1:00 PM UTC

Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

DALLAS — The Mavericks started 4-17 this season. They were down 21 points to the Utah Jazz in the second half on Thursday. Instead of fading against a West playoff team, the Mavericks roared back for a 112-105 win in overtime that pushed their record to 21-32. In their last 15 games, the Mavericks have won 10 of them, putting them 2.5 games out of the eighth seed in the Western Conference.

What is dead may never die, and what is the Mavericks with Rick Carlisle and a healthy Dirk Nowitzki will never play below .500 basketball.

I gave Wesley Matthews — who was saying all the way back when the team was at that 4-17 mark that they were still making a playoff run — a chance to gloat a little. He declined, sticking to cliches and sincere praise for the teammates that always rise up when the Mavericks need them.

“We’re gonna keep fighting,” he said. “I’m proud of this team. I’m proud of everyone in this locker room.”

It’s an attitude that permeated from the head coach down. You don’t come back from down 21 on the Utah Jazz to beat them without that, after all.

“The guys have been fighting all year,” Rick Carlisle said. “We weren’t playing well. We weren’t fighting hard enough, and the guy who changed the game tonight was Anderson. Justin Anderson came in with energy, with force.”

Carlisle is referring to a 10-minute stretch that started with just under seven minutes left in the third quarter, after Dallas went down by 21. Anderson had a modest stat line — two points, two rebounds, an assist and a steal — but his energy mattered and his plus-16 showed it. He drew a charge on Alec Burks to end the third quarter and threw in a tip dunk off a missed free throw to start the fourth, two plays that helped the Mavericks pull back into single digits, and eventually a tie game.

As media surrounded Anderson after the game, Matthews couldn’t stop laughing. He took a photo for posterity, which must have been for clowning Anderson later on. After all, the athletic wing fell out of the rotation when the year rolled around to 2017 and has only played spottily since. A crowd around his locker room was an unusual sight this year.

There was no amusing photography in the Mavericks’ locker room when 4-17 had them to their lowest point. But slowly and steadily, Carlisle started to find the right mix of players to make this team tick. Dirk Nowitzki returned for good from a nagging Achilles injury, which was the first step on the right track for Dallas. He nailed the game-tying shot in this game, of course, thanks to the ball making a very fortunate bounce for the Hall of Famer.

It wasn’t an immediate fix when Nowitzki returned. The Mavericks had envisioned him playing next to Andrew Bogut when they traded for the center this summer, but the two didn’t really work well next to each other. Meanwhile, Harrison Barnes’ best games came at the four, where he could take advantage of slower players and consistently drive to the rim. Fortunately, a couple Bogut injuries in quick succession made this decision easy: slide Nowitzki, keep Barnes as the four, and live with the occasional rebounding disasters that causes. So far, so good.

That lineup change — and the random addition of Yogi Ferrell who quickly turned into a sensation — has the Mavericks rolling. Since Jan. 12, when the 10-5 stretch began, Dallas has the ninth-best offense and sixth-best defense in the league. They still have work to do to push back into the playoff picture, but an awful race for the No. 8 seed has them in striking distance of Denver.

This is the wizardry that is the Mavericks. It happened in 2013, when Nowitzki missed the first 27 games of the season only for Dallas to end up a game out of the playoffs by the season’s end. It happened last year, when many of the experts predicted doom and gloom after the disastrous DeAndre Jordan saga. And it’s happening here again, with Rick Carlisle and Dirk Nowitzki once again engineering a team out of nothing that is beating their way back towards .500 despite for no apparent reason at all.

Oklahoma City is ready for Kevin Durant’s return

The schedule makers didn’t show any mercy to the Thunder when they scheduled a meeting with Cleveland on Thursday, two days before the most anticipated game on the NBA schedule. That’s Kevin Durant’s return to Oklahoma City, of course.

The Thunder aced the first of the two games, beating Cleveland 118-109 on Thursday despite all three of the Big Three playing on the second night of a back-to-back. Russell Westbrook looked like he was on way for a monster triple-double after nearly cracking it in the first half, but he finished with 29 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists all the same. He’s still averaging a triple-double, by the way.

Obviously, Saturday’s game is the premiere game of the first half of the season. We cared about Warriors vs. Cavaliers on Christmas, and the Thunder’s first game in Golden State felt important. But this is Kevin Durant IN Oklahoma City for the first time since he said, “No, I’m leaving you.”

Oh, it’ll be a glorious shit show.