Kidd's Season-High 21 Points Lift Mavs Past Lakers
DALLAS (AP) - Jason Kidd broke out of an awful shooting slump to score a season-high 21 points, and Jason Terry and Shawn Marion provided solid scoring as reserves, helping the Dallas Mavericks beat the Los Angeles Lakers 109-100 on Wednesday night and end an ugly six-game losing streak.
Kidd made 8 of 12 shots after going 1 of 14 over his previous two games. Terry and Marion scored 22 each.
The club made a similar turnaround, going from five straight losses by at least 10 points each -- their worst such stretch since their woeful days in the mid-1990s -- to a convincing win over the two-time defending champions.
The Lakers led by 11 in the first half and were up by eight midway through the third quarter. Then the Mavericks got rolling on both ends of the court. They were up by nine going into the fourth quarter, and Kobe Bryant wasn't even able to force a tight finish.
Pau Gasol scored 23 points as the Lakers lost for only the second time in their last 10 games. Bryant had 21 points and 10 assists, and Lamar Odom had 20 points and 10 rebounds.
Dallas was 2-9 over an extended period. The tailspin started with Dirk Nowitzki out with a knee injury, then got worse when Caron Butler was lost for the season. Nowitzki returned for the last two games of the skid, but center Tyson Chandler was dealing with an illness.
With Nowitzki and Chandler still not at full strength, the Mavericks needed more scoring options. And Kidd delivered.
He hadn't scored more than 16 in a game all year, but had 13 in the pivotal third quarter alone. He made all five shots he took, three of them behind the arc. He finished 5 of 8 on 3s, after having missed 12 of his last 13.
Kidd didn't score a point in the final period, so Marion and Terry surpassed him. That helped make up for Nowitzki scoring only 14.
Sasha Pavlovic scored 11 points in a surprise start. Not only was this the last day of a 10-day contract, he also was wearing a clear mask to protect a broken nose suffered in the previous game.
NOTES: Dallas made 55 percent of its shots for the game, a season best. ... Gasol went over 13,000 career points. ... Lakers coach Phil Jackson and Mavs owner Mark Cuban played nice, with neither doing much to raise the stakes in their verbal sparring. Cuban said he enjoys the back-and-forth. ... The Mavericks got off to a strange start. In the first quarter, they were 8 of 11 on 2-pointers and 2 of 10 on 3-pointers. They also had assists on nine of those 10 hoops.
