Hobbled, tired Dallas Mavericks can’t keep up with Thunder, exit

A season that started with so many injured players making headlines ended with more injured players making headlines.

Fighting Oklahoma City with a severe manpower shortage, the Dallas Mavericks were eliminated from the playoffs as the Thunder used a late fourth-quarter surge to emerge Monday night with a 118-104 victory at Chesapeake Energy Arena.

In claiming the last three games, the Thunder wound up winning this best-of-seven first-round playoff series 4-1. Oklahoma City will play Game 1 of a best-of-seven Western Conference semifinal series on the road on Saturday against the San Antonio Spurs.

The Mavs, meanwhile, have finished another season where they bowed out of the first round of postseason play. The Mavs finished the regular season 42-40 and haven’t gotten out of the first round of the playoffs since they won the franchise’s only NBA title in 2011.

Monday’s game started awful for the Mavs, who fell behind 35-24 when Russell Westbrook scored 13 of his game-high 36 points in the first quarter. But after the first 12 minutes, the Mavs played like they weren’t ready for a vacation.

With rookie Justin Anderson and second-year veteran Dwight Powell fueling the fire, the Mavs were within 101-98 of the Thunder following a layup by Dirk Nowitzki (24 points) with 7:51 remaining in the game.

Dallas even had two chances to tie the game, but 3-pointers by J.J. Barea and Nowitzki missed their mark, and the Thunder was off to the races.

OKC finished the game on a 17-6 run as the tired-legged Mavs looked defenseless down the stretch.

Afterward, coach Rick Carlisle discussed the future of Nowitzki, who can opt out of the final year of his contract this summer and become a free agent and play elsewhere or retire, if he so chooses.

“We’ve got to hope that this isn’t Dirk’s last game as a Maverick,” Carlisle said. “He has the option to become a free agent, and I’m ready to get on a plane and go to Germany to recruit him to be back.

“But I don’t think we can take that for granted. I think we have to give him that kind of respect.”

Nowitzki played 35 minutes and was 8-of-16 from the field, one game after playing 40 minutes in Game 4.

“He’s done so much for our organization, he’s sacrificed so much,” Carlisle said. “It’s been such a life-changing experience for me to be around a player of that magnitude for eight years, it’s indescribable.

“I think he will be back, but I don’t want anybody to just assume anything because he’s been too great and this is an important time for our franchise.”

Before the game, owner Mark Cuban talked about how the Thunder had one superstar — Kevin Durant — and made sure to mention that Westbrook was an All-Star, but not a superstar.

But during the game, Durant finished with 33 points and seven rebounds, and Westbrook collected 36 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists.

The Mavs were missing starters Chandler Parsons (right knee surgery) and Deron Williams (left abdominal strained), and key reserves David Lee (right plantar fascia) and Salah Mejri (hip flexor). But they outscored the Thunder in the middle two quarters, 59-58, and only trailed 93-83 after the third quarter.

Besides Nowitzki, Powell scored 16 points and grabbed nine rebounds, Anderson had 14 points, Zaza Pachulia finished with 12 points, seven rebounds and nine assists, Wesley Matthews tallied 11 points and Raymond Felton added 10 points.

But the Mavs gave up too many second shots to win a game of this stature, as OKC rebounded them 42-35.

This story was originally published April 25, 2016 at 8:29 PM with the headline "Hobbled, tired Dallas Mavericks can’t keep up with Thunder, exit."