Nowitzki's return a short one in loss to Memphis
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Krzyzewski: Odom still part of Team USA pool Eddie Sefko - The Dallas Morning News
It was the return of Dirk Nowitzki, who was back after missing nine games with a sprained right knee.
It did not go smoothly.
He had seven points and five rebounds in Saturday's game in Memphis against the Grizzlies, hitting just two of seven shots in 14 minutes.
At least Nowitzki didn’t have to worry about going over his minutes restriction in his first game back. He was was given the heave-ho by referee Eric Dalen with 8:08 to go in the third quarter.
Nowitzki got a personal foul when he was trying to defend Zach Randolph. Nowitzki went to Dalen to tell him that Randolph was using some overly aggressive moves to create space.
“Don’t let him elbow me all day long,’’ Nowitzki said. That earned the first technical, and when Nowitzki kept jawing at Dalen, he got the second tech, as well as the automatic ejection that comes with it.
The Mavericks were down by a dozen at the time. They trailed by as much as 23 points, and their point total was easily the lowest of the season.
Without Tyson Chandler, the Mavericks got a nice boost from Ian Mahinmi, who right now looks like the second-best center on the team. Brendan Haywood started in place of Chandler, who was ill and remained at the team hotel. Mahinmi had seven points and five rebounds in eight minutes during the first half.
The Mavericks missed nine of their first 11 shots and fell behind 22-7 because of it. The Grizzlies made 10 of their first 16 shots to put the Mavericks in the hole.
Shawn Marion had the prettiest pass of the season so far. Midway through the second quarter, he threaded a pass in traffic to Mahinmi for an uncontested dunk. Unfortunately, that made the score only 36-29, in favor of Memphis. They ended the first half trailing by 10 and scoring only 36 points, their second-lowest first-half score of the season.
Dominique Jones started the second half in place of DeShawn Stevenson.
Zach Randolph had a double-double — in the first half — with 17 points and 11 rebounds. He ended up with 23 points and 20 rebounds, the 11th 20-20 game in Grizzlies’ history. Zebo has six of them.
The second half was delayed about five minutes while a crew cleaned up a mess on the baseline near the basket at which the Mavericks were going to be shooting. Somebody got sick and threw up. Apparently, they watched the Mavericks’ first half.
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