Dallas’ Outburst Silences Clippers

Twenty-four hours later, a fourth-quarter Clipper comeback never materialized. The last-minute shots were meaningless.

The Dallas Mavericks made sure of it, turning a close game into a blowout Thursday night and extending the Clippers’ losing streak to four games with a 99-77 victory in front of 19,576 in American Airlines Center.

Afterward, it was hard to believe that the Clippers had led by eight points in the third quarter and that the score was still tied 90 seconds before the fourth.

In their first game under assistant Avery Johnson, subbing for Coach Don Nelson over the next few weeks while Nelson recuperates from surgery on his right rotator cuff he had earlier in the day, the Mavericks ended the game with a 33-11 run.

They closed the third quarter with a 7-2 run and opened the fourth with a 17-3 blitz, outscoring the Clippers, 24-5, over 8 minutes 13 seconds.

The Clippers, who Wednesday night rallied from a 13-point fourth-quarter deficit before missing a last-second shot in an 80-79 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, made two of 14 shots in the fourth quarter against the Mavericks. Of their six turnovers in the fourth quarter, four came in their first five possessions.

They scored only nine points in the quarter, a season low.

“I don’t know happened,” Corey Maggette said quietly in a corner of the locker room, a bucket of ice nearby to soak his left foot. “I’m still mind-boggled by it. We just didn’t execute. I don’t know, man. It just went so fast....

“This is a team we can beat. I don’t think Dallas is better than us.... We just need to be better, man, and continue to play hard. We can’t have those lapses in the second half. This has happened to us before. We just need to be better.”

The Clippers led at halftime, 48-42, and scored the first two points of the third quarter on free throws by Maggette before the Mavericks rallied, ultimately dropping the Clippers to three games below .500 for the first time and sending them to their ninth loss in their last 10 road games.

“What happens is, a team like that blows up on you,” Clipper Coach Mike Dunleavy said. “We missed some easy shots, made a couple turnovers and missed a couple of assignments and they can blow it up to 15 in a heartbeat....

“We’ve had this happen to us a couple times where we’ve played well early and then kind of faded a little bit down the stretch.”

But nothing quite like this.

Elton Brand, who made nine of 20 shots and led the Clippers with 24 points and 14 rebounds, didn’t score again after making two free throws to tie the score at 66-66 with 1:39 to play in the third quarter.

Jason Terry scored on a driving layup at the other end, and, after Brand missed a reverse layup, Dirk Nowitzki knocked down a three-point shot to kick-start the Mavericks’ rally.

Led by Terry and Michael Finley, who combined for 22 points on 10-for-13 shooting, the Mavericks made 57.9% of their shots in the second half.

The Clippers made 23.7%, Rick Brunson missing five of six, Brand and Chris Kaman each missing four of five and six reserves going a combined 0 for 8.

As Dunleavy noted, “It was a tale of two halves for us. In the second half, we had a combination of things go against us.”

But not enough to dull the coach’s sense of humor. Asked whether he’d seen anything different from the Mavericks under Johnson than he’d seen under Nelson, Dunleavy couldn’t resist needling his former coach.

“Other than the difference of the players responding better to him and playing harder for him,” he said of Johnson, “I don’t know what else I could have seen out there.”