Big first quarter helps Suns dump Mavericks

That fear of what happens in the first home game after a long road trip became a reality Friday night for the Dallas Mavericks.

Looking as if they were sleep-walking, the Mavs allowed Phoenix a whopping 40 points in the first quarter and the Suns used that salvo to roll to a 118-106 victory at American Airlines Center.

In snapping the Mavs’ five-game winning streak, the Suns (12-8) won in Dallas for just the second time in their past 13 appearances.

And they did it by mainly using speed, a layup drill and making 13 of 26 shots from behind the 3-point arc.

The 40 points the Mavs (15-6) permitted in the first quarter — the most they’ve allowed any team to score in one quarter this season — was indicative of a team without its bearings after a weeklong road trip that ended Wednesday in Milwaukee.

“When you start out giving up a 40-point first quarter you’re not ready to play defensively,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “I take responsibility for the effort.”

The only time the Mavs led was 4-2. Then it got to 23-12 Suns, and eventually swelled to as much as 36-18 with 2:57 remaining in the first period.

“We can’t give up 40 points in the first quarter and expect to win a game,” Monta Ellis said.

The Suns dominated in the first quarter.

“Any team is going to have issues if you’re not in a [defensive] stance and you’re not helping each other,” Carlisle said. “Our thing from Day One has been we’ve got to do it collectively, it’s as simple as that.”

Once the Suns got up 11-6, the closest the Mavs got was 93-88 early in the fourth quarter on a layup by Tyson Chandler. That got the crowd into it, but only briefly.

From there, the Suns sucked the energy out of the crowd as Goran Dragic sandwiched a pair of layups around a layup by P.J. Tucker as Phoenix built its lead to 103-89 with 8:42 remaining.

“He’s one of the best in the league at getting in the lane,” Carlisle said of Dragic, who finished with 28 points and 13 assists.

“He’s got a great a long-range game now, he’s got a great midrange game and he’s left-handed and deceptive.”

The Mavs got 33 points from Ellis, and 15 points and 18 rebounds from Chandler. However, Dirk Nowitzki struggled trying to wiggle free of the Morris twins — Markieff and Marcus — and finished with a season-low 10 points on 2 of 10 shots.

“Playing teams like this in this conference you can’t afford to get down that much,” said Chandler Parsons, who scored 15 points. “They played better and harder than us and we can’t allow us to have that poor of a first quarter and a bad start like that.”

For the Mavs, suddenly that impressive 4-0 road trip looked like a distant memory, especially because Friday night’s game started a period in which they’ll play five games in nine days.

“They were shooting over 60 percent the majority of the game,” Carlisle said. “It was a combination of poor defense, inefficient offense that equaled to a 40-point quarter.

“We knew that these guys had it going. We just weren’t able to put up enough resistance, particularly early in the game and it cost us.”

This story was originally published December 6, 2014 at 12:05 AM with the headline "Big first quarter helps Suns dump Mavericks."