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The 2015-16 regular season is in the books.
First, the good news: the Dallas Mavericks are in the playoffs (duh), and despite this loss, chances are still good that the Mavs remain in the sixth seed and take on the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round of the playoffs.
The bad news: Dallas blew an 18 point lead at home against a team that was resting 4/5ths of their starting lineup and a couple of key bench players.
Not exactly the end to the season you want, but...oh well. 42-40 is still better than a lot of prognosticators expected back in October.
The Mavs were without Western Conference player of the week J.J. Barea -- who sat to recover from his groin injury -- and Devin Harris, if you want to pretend that's anything resembling an excuse. David Lee also took an early rest after an injury in the first half. Raymond Felton led the Mavs with 22 points, doing most of his damage in the first half. Dirk had a rough night shooting the ball, missing 7 of his first 8 and finished 5-17 from the field. All together, Dallas' big three of Dirk-Wes-Deron went 6-25 from three, and 13-44 overall.
It sucks, I know, but you really have to hand it to the Spurs. They rested everybody, and yet still were able to get superb performances from guys a lot of fans have probably never heard of, like former Cougar Jonathan Simmons (19 points off the bench), and possible Tolkien creation Boban Marjanovich (22 points on nine shots). 2014 first round pick Kyle Anderson went 15-10-4 with five steals and hit several big buckets to quell a late Maverick run.
Dallas did their best to try and pull out a miracle at the end, hitting a couple of tough threes and playing the foul game in the final minute. It wasn't enough, however, so now we wait the conclusion of Memphis-Golden State to find out who the Mavs' first round playoff opponent will be. For a refresher course on the possible scenarios, you can check out this article from earlier in the week, but things are a little simper now: if Memphis wins, Dallas gets San Antonio (gulp). If the Warriors win and make history, Dallas gets OKC.
Keep it here for more updates throughout the night and week on the Mavs playoff schedule and preview. In the meantime, sound off in the comments!