There were moments where it looked like this game was within our reach. The Mavericks had a few leads early, but they just couldn't maintain them when it mattered. The closest it ever got was one point, but there was some sort of lid on the basket for Jason Terry, and he couldn't provide his fourth-quarter boost when we really needed it.
Caron Butler had a career night with the Mavericks, hitting the 30 point mark for his first time since joining the team. Only Shawn Marion and Jason Kidd joined Butler in double-digit land. Kidd, however, managed to pull out his 106th triple double with 12 points, 13 assists and 10 rebounds. It was clear that the Mavericks needed Dirk tonight, if only to get them over the invisible wall they set for themselves.
The Spurs played as well as was expected, with five players in double figures. Their high scorer was the young Gary Neal, an NBA rookie who hit 5-8 from beyond the arc. It's fair to say that the Mavericks didn't defeat themselves... they only had 10 turnovers, they shot a respectable 42%, and played great team basketball. They were outrebounded, though, and as we saw with the Bulls game, when Dallas gets beat badly on the boards, they straight up get beat.
While we wait for our recap from Bryan, feel free to vent on this thread.