Mavericks at Rockets
The Dallas Mavericks made some big changes to the rotation and it ended up extending their first-round Western Conference series for at least one more game. The Mavericks will try to stay alive again when they visit the Houston Rockets for Game 5 on Tuesday.
The Mavericks lost Chandler Parsons to a knee injury early in the series and Rajon Rondo is not with the team while getting treatment for a back injury, and coach Rick Carlisle decided to push Al-Farouq Aminu and J.J. Barea into the starting lineup for Game 4. "I thought J.J. and Farouq were phenomenal tonight," Dallas forward Dirk Nowitzki told reporters. “It was kind of like a next-man-up mentality. Those guys stepped in and both were great.” Josh Smith scored 23 points off the bench for the Rockets but was upset with his team’s performance in a close-out game. “They played like a team that was trying to close us out,” Smith told reporters. “We played like a team that was going home, and it can’t be like that. We got to have a killer instinct in that type of moment.”
TV: 8 p.m. ET, TNT, KTXA (Dallas), ROOT (Houston)
ABOUT THE MAVERICKS: Raymond Felton got the first chance to start in place of Rondo at the point in Game 3 but Carlisle decided to go with more energy in Game 4 and pushed Barea into the first unit. The veteran responded with 17 points and 13 assists in 36 minutes. “I'm trying to push it every time," Barea told reporters. “I'm trying to be aggressive and my teammates, people around me are ballin'. I'm just trying to attack and do my job. If I do my job and I create problems for their defense, then I think everybody else plays a lot looser and more open.”
ABOUT THE ROCKETS: Houston missed 17 straight shots in a 10-minute span that bridged the half and never recovered in Game 4. “We got slow offensively, the ball stuck,” Rockets coach Kevin McHale told reporters. “We didn’t do very well for that stretch. All that being said, it was our offensive rebounding and our lack of being able to contain the ball that ended up beating us. Our offense sucked for a while. That was a fatal blow, more of our effort overall I think.” MVP candidate James Harden went 1-of-7 from 3-point range in the loss while handing out a series-low five assists.
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Rockets G/F Corey Brewer is averaging 16.8 points in the series.
2. Dallas G Monta Ellis is averaging 32.5 points in the last two games.
3. Houston C Dwight Howard, who grabbed a postseason career-high 26 rebounds in Game 3, managed seven boards in Game 4.