Dallas burned by early fall-out

If mere pride goes before a fall, far worse awaited the Dallas Mavericks and owner Mark Cuban, whose bombast set them up for a pratfall for the ages that arrived with a splat Thursday night.

In an upset as improbable as the dead-end kids who pulled it off, the Golden State Warriors buried the team that finished 25 games ahead of them, 111-86, taking the series, 4-2.

The Mavericks, who went 67-15 this season, became the winningest No. 1-seeded team ever to fall in the first round of the NBA playoffs.

“You can’t describe it,” said Dirk Nowitzki, their MVP candidate who finished with a thud, missing 11 of his 13 shots and scoring eight points.

“You play your heart out for six months. ... I feel sorry for the whole organization, the players, the coaches.”

Making it even more unbelievable, they lost to a franchise that hadn’t been in the playoffs in 13 years, and to a Warriors team that was 26-35 on March 4 when first-year Coach Don Nelson said they had no chance of breaking the streak.

Then there were the Warriors themselves:

Baron Davis, the forgotten superstar who had arthroscopic knee surgery in February, strained a hamstring in the first quarter, came back in the second, settled for outside shots the rest of the night while hopping around on one leg ... and scored 20 points.

Stephen Jackson, traded from Indiana where his troubled career included going into the stands in the Auburn Hills riot and firing a pistol to break up a fight outside a nightclub, was ejected twice in this series, somehow missed being suspended by the league for this game ... and scored 33 points, making seven three-pointers.

Matt Barnes, Davis’ former UCLA teammate, getting his first chance with his fifth NBA team, played with his own hamstring strain and scored 16 points.

Then there was Nelson, the former Dallas coach whose feud with Cuban made the Warriors and Mavericks the NBA equivalent of the Sharks and Jets.

Trying to forget last spring’s horror show, when they blew a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals after leading by 13 points in the last 6 1/2 minutes of Game 3, the Mavericks ruled the NBA this season, winning 51 of 55 games at one point. However, they were 1-3 against Golden State, whose open-court game bothered them, and nothing changed in this series.

The Warriors blasted to a 12-3 start Thursday. The Mavericks had closed to 19-15 when Davis lost the ball on a fastbreak and came back grabbing his right hamstring. He went to the locker room, was re-taped and returned while Dallas tied the game.

Finding he could no longer blow by the Mavericks, Davis started firing from outside. A 32% career three-point shooter, he was already at 52% in this series before making three more and scoring 13 points by halftime.

Said Davis: “I told my teammates, ‘I’m going to give it all I have but I don’t want to be the hardest-playing player on the floor. You guys are going to have to carry me.’ ”

So they did. Jackson, who had already hit three threes in the first half, hit three more in the first six minutes of the third quarter, which turned into a 36-15 Golden State blitz.

“It’s the biggest disappointment I’ve had in my 19 years” in the NBA, Dallas Coach Avery Johnson said. “You really have to tip your hat to them, especially Baron Davis. How special was he? I’ve seen him before. I played against him. You’re talking about a guy who refused to lose. He hurt his leg and we isolated him and went at him and he just wouldn’t give in.”

The Warriors had gone even longer -- 16 years -- since they last won a playoff series, but that one is over, too.

“I don’t know if I have to pinch myself or wake up from this dream,” said Jason Richardson, “but this is everything I wanted.”

mark.heisler@latimes.com