SAN ANTONIO _ It would be nice to report that this is the absolute nadir for the Dallas Mavericks.
Rock bottom. The worst of the worst in a season filled with lousy moments.
Unfortunately, there are 52 games to go and with this team, the bottom can always fall out from underneath them.
Again.
On Saturday night, they were the clearly superior team for 44 minutes. Then, they fell completely to pieces and coughed up a 98-96 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, a team playing without Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker and Danny Green.
Dirk Nowitzki called it like he saw it.
"Yeah, we did everything right to lose, really," he said. "We literally had to do everything perfect to lose this game _ and we did."
Manu Ginobili, one of the rare players in the NBA in that he's older than Nowitzki, made two heroic plays in the final 24 seconds.
The Mavericks had been up 96-85 with four minutes to play. The Spurs leaned heavily on Ginobili down the stretch. They chopped the lead down to 96-94, then got LaMarcus Aldridge's bucket with 23.4 seconds left.
The Mavericks could hold for the last shot and used their last timeout to move the ball into the front court.
Wesley Matthews was the trigger man and he couldn't get the ball inbounds. He finally threw it off Ginobili's leg, but the ball came back and hit Matthews, who was out of bounds and the ball went to the Spurs.
They got it to Ginobili and he blew by Matthews after a screen by Aldridge to score the winning bucket with 3.1 seconds left.
It was a gut-punch of a loss. And one that's become quite familiar as the Mavericks now are 1-15 in games that have been within five points at some point in the final five minutes of the game.
Catching opponents on the right night is something that happens from time to time in the NBA. For whatever reason, a player or players aren't active. Or a team is in the midst of some crazy schedule.
Or, as in the case of the Mavericks on Saturday night, they caught the Spurs in both situations.
And it still wasn't enough for the Mavericks to exploit for a victory.
The Spurs stole the game, pure and simple.
The Mavericks wasted big nights from Maxi Kleber and Yogi Ferrell.
Kleber had a season-best 21 points and was a strong defensive force against Aldridge and any other Spurs who challenged him in the paint.
All Ferrell did was have his first career double-double with 17 points and 11 rebounds. He also dished out six assists.
