Dallas Mavericks have defeated the New Orleans Hornets at the American Airlines Center, in Dallas by 98-95.
Player Stats
Mavericks’ Jason Terry scored 26 points, Dirk Nowitzki scored 25 and Jason Kidd scored 16 points for the home side. While for New Orleans, Chris Paul scored 22 points, Peja Stojakovic scored 17 and Trevor Ariza scored 13 points.
Chris Paul also gave the Hornets nine assists, unfortunately that didn’t help much as Paul scored only two second-half points.
Box Score
The Hornets were playing well with a total of 10 rebounds and 12 offensive rebounds.
The Mavericks succeeded in getting 4 rebounds and 8 offensive rebounds.
The Hornets took the biggest lead at 11 and the Mavericks took at eight. Both the teams scored same number of points in the paint at 24.
Nowitzki steals the day for the Mavericks
It was Dirk Nowitzki’s 25 points and 10 rebounds that stretched the win for the Mavericks to four games.
Two crucial ties
Terry grabbed an 18-footer with only 34 seconds left and gave his team another 97-95 edge over the opponents.
Trevor Ariza had tied the game with his 3 pointer when only 40 seconds were left in the game and both teams were locked on 95-95 points each.
Into the Game
With 2.8 seconds left, Nowitzki tied the game again with one free throw. Emeka Okafor was not lucky enough to clinch the 25-footer and missed it for the Mavericks.
The Hornets blew it by missing eight of the 24 free throws they could have otherwise scored. Even the Mavericks were not that good with handling them as they also missed 8 out of 27. Jason Kidd was of great help as he scored 16 points and grabbed six assists
as Dallas Mavericks rallied from a 10 point in a fourth quarter deficit.
Quotable
"It was an attempt to get more playmaking into the game, get more penetration in the game,"
said Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle who was rather pleased with his team’s performance.
4 fouls for Paul
Paul spent the rest of the final 7 minutes of the third quarter sitting on the bench because of his four fouls. He later returned when there were about two minutes into the fourth quarter.
Paul later said that no one can do anything while sitting on the bench. He confessed that it was his fault and that he did expect the referees to call the fouls on him.
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