There might have been snow falling outside instead of May flowers blooming, but it never seems to matter for the Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs .
The frosty weather couldn't cool off this fiery rivalry. It looked, felt and smelled like the playoffs. On a night with off-the-charts intensity and entertainment value, the Mavericks came up a few plays short as the Spurs got out of town with a 133-126 double-overtime win at American Airlines Center that offset the Mavericks' victory in San Antonio last month. "It's disappointing," coach Rick Carlisle said. "It was a great game. It was a lot of great Basketball, and they just made a couple more plays at key times than we were able to make. We battled. We just weren't good enough over however many minutes it was."
It seemed like the teams played all night long. And the Mavericks had a ton of big-time performances, but so did the Spurs. What it came down to was the final two minutes of the second overtime. Down by a point, the Spurs found Bruce Bowen in the right corner after Dirk Nowitzki had drifted away from him to help defensively. Bowen canned the shot for a 127-125 lead.
"He's been making shots like that for a long time," Tim Duncan said. "Just a great game by both teams fighting through ups and downs."
After a couple of botched possessions, the Mavericks got a free throw from Erick Dampier. But Duncan took a nice pass from Manu Ginobili for a driving layup with 40.7 to go and a 129-126 lead.
J.J. Barea, who had a huge second half, missed a 16-foot jumper, and Roger Mason's free throws with 23.5 to go clinched it for the Spurs.
It was a shame the Mavericks couldn't capitalize on a silver-bullet effort. They came away knowing they played well. They also came away with their four-game winning streak halted.
Wasted was Nowitzki's 35 points and 10 rebounds, not to mention 64 points, 21 assists and 19 rebounds from the guard troika of Jason Kidd, Jason Terry and Barea.
The Spurs had a statistical hero to answer every Maverick, however. Duncan was unstoppable, except on occasion by Dampier, and finished with 32 points and 14 rebounds. Tony Parker had 29 points and 10 assists, and Ginobili had 18 and eight.
Carlisle sensed the Mavericks were headed for a tight, tough finish when they failed to take care of business after going up by 11 in the second quarter.
"They had a 30-point quarter and got going offensively," Carlisle said. "Then as we played well in the third, we were only able to tie. So that was tough."
The Mavericks made 12-of-14 shots in the third quarter but made up no ground. When it went to overtime, they fell behind, 115-111, but got two free throws from Terry, then survived a flagrant foul as Terry had no choice but to foul Parker hard to prevent an easy layup.
It was a playoff-caliber foul, for sure. Parker made one free throw to make it 116-113.
When Dampier flipped out a pass to Kidd on the 3-point line, Kidd's shot was perfect to extend the game to another bonus frame.
"I think anybody that watched the game, came to the game or participated knew this was a great game," Kidd said. "Nobody wanted to lose. Nobody wanted to go home. We had our chances in the first overtime, but came up a little short."
