The Mavericks don't much resemble the team they were in the regular season, and that's a good thing. They once again took it to the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday night, closed them out in Game 5 of their first-round series, and earned their first playoff series win since the 2006 West finals.
It's been a long, mentally twisting road for the Mavs. What have they learned through the 2006 Finals meltdown, two first-round playoff losses and a strange first season under coach Rick Carlisle?
"We're fighters," Dirk Nowitzki said. "We can win on the road."
Nowitzki finally came to life in the scoring column Tuesday night with a series-high 31 points. Two of his 11 field goals turned a four-point lead back to eight with back-to-back jumpers around the five-minute mark of the third quarter to snuff another Spurs run.
That was the theme of the night. Each time the Spurs closed to within four, the Mavs had an answer, many times by Nowitzki, and pushed the lead back to double digits.
"We struggled closing out games all season long on the road. It wasn't pretty there for a while," Nowitzki said. "If we stay solid defensively, we have a lot of weapons offensively and we'll be in good shape."
MAVERICKS 106, SPURS 93: Dirk Nowitzki scored 31 points, his high in the series and first game of more than 20 points, and Josh Howard and Jason Terry each scored 17 in the first-round clincher. It was Terry's high-point game of the series as well. Tim Duncan poured in his series high of 30 points, and Tony Parker had 24. Once again, no other Spurs player scored in double figures, while the Mavs had five. A 31-20 first quarter set the tone, and Dallas made big shots every time San Antonio closed the gap.
