After letting a 21-point lead turn into a nine-point deficit in the closing minutes, Dirk Nowitzki came alive with consecutive 3-pointers to start a game-ending 15-0 run that carried the Mavericks past the Golden State Warriors 118-112 Tuesday night.
That guaranteed the NBA’s best regular-season team at least one more game in the playoffs - Game 6 on Thursday night at Oakland.
Golden State led 112-103 on a lunging 3-pointer by Baron Davis with 3:19 left that looked to be the knockout punch for one of the most stunning upsets in NBA history. Yet that’s when Nowitzki picked Dallas up off the mat, the way the league’s likely MVP is supposed to do - but something he’d yet to do all series.
Nowitzki scored 12 points the rest of the way, hitting the two 3s and went 6-of-7 from the foul line. The Warriors helped the collapse by missing their final eight shots.
Nowitzki wound up with 30 points, easily his most this series. He was 14-of-15 from the line, and had 12 rebounds.
The Warriors hung on the door to their locker room one of the yellow “We Believe” T-shirts that fueled them at home in Games 3 and 4. They’re sure to see more of them when the first-round series shifts back to Oakland. If a Game 7 is needed, it would be in Dallas on Saturday night.
Davis did his best to get Golden State into the second round right away with 27 points and nine assists. He was 7-of-7 for 21 points with six assists, including a half-court alley-oop to Jason Richardson, in the second half. But he also was part of the collapse, drawing his fifth and sixth fouls during the Mavs’ big finish.
Golden State’s Stephen Jackson added to the misery by getting ejected with 8.9 seconds left. The Warriors also wasted 16 3-pointers, a franchise-record for a playoff game. Richardson had five of them and 23 points.
Dallas’ Josh Howard had 23 points, eight rebounds and five assists, and was right in the middle of the fourth-quarter turnaround, a big change from his second-half absence in a Game 4 loss.
Nowitzki finished the game with 30 points.
Devin Harris scored 11 of his 16 points in the final period, including nine in a row. The last two came on a layup he spun off the glass that put Dallas within 112-111.
Jason Richardson added 23 for the Warriors.
Only the Denver Nuggets (1994) and the New York Knicks (1999) have won a playoff series as a No. 8 seed - and both did it in the old best-of-five format.
