Dragnsmke1

Mr. 81 comes to town Tuesday, and who better than Kobe Bryant to illustrate the difference between a great player and a great team.

Bryant has played 45 games this season. Four times, he has failed to lead the Lakers in scoring. They are 1-3 in those games.

Dirk Nowitzki is as important to the Mavericks as Bryant is to the Lakers. Nowitzki has failed to lead his team in scoring in the last four games. They are 4-0. For the season, they are 12-4 in games that Nowitzki doesn't lead (or tie for the lead) in scoring.

This is tremendous news for the Mavericks.

Think back to last April and May when Nowitzki was cuffed by the Houston defense that was intent on not getting beat by the Mavericks' best player. The ploy almost worked, extending the Mavericks to seven games.

Imagine what would happen now if a playoff opponent took Nowitzki out of the game with double-teams. Or if he went chilly from the perimeter. The Mavericks now are comfortable going to Josh Howard, Jerry Stackhouse or Jason Terry as a primary scorer.

"That's huge," coach Avery Johnson says. "He doesn't have to lead us every night. I want him to be aggressive and get his shots. But we've got to be able to get some offense from someplace else."

Lately, that hasn't been a problem. Howard has led the Mavericks in scoring the last four games. Before that, Nowitzki led in one game and Stackhouse in two.

The importance of having more than one potentially dominant scorer is crucial. San Antonio is 19-6 when somebody other than Tim Duncan is its eading scorer.

Few teams have the luxury of four players who have averaged 19 or more points for a season in their careers like the Mavericks (Nowitzki, Stackhouse, Keith Van Horn and Terry). And Howard is a young scorer on the rise.

"More nights than not, Dirk is going to deliver for us," Stackhouse says. "But we've got a lot of people here who know how to put the ball in the hole."

Not that Johnson, or anybody else, wants Nowitzki to slip into a secondary offensive role too often. Their universe still revolves around him.

"We've seen this before," Howard says. "We all know there's going to come a time when he's going to explode again. Right now, it's just important for us to give Dirk the opportunity to rest for a few games. We've got other guys who can score if need be."

As Johnson said: "We don't want to take that too far."

Nowitzki was so good in the first 43 games of the season, averaging 26 points per game, that when he averages only 19.3 over the last four, everybody looks for reasons.

But there's no need to panic when the team goes 4-0 without Nowitzki being an offensive monster.

E-mail esefko@dallasnews.com

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Tersk

Do you think this hurts his case for MVP?

Seed

yea I think so too

Dragnsmke1

you know what?... screw an MVP, a Chip will say all that needs to be said and set the precedent for the next couple of years...

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Dragnsmke1

A telling factor: Dirk Nowitzki, who had a team-best 26 points, was on the bench for the entire run. It's hard to envision the Lakers making a similar push with Bryant not involved.

"We're a deep team," Devin Harris said. "We have six or seven players who can go off besides Dirk."

The Lakers never got closer than 10 the rest of the way as they were content to launch and misfire on 3-pointers, missing 22 of 29 heaves from beyond the arc.

As always, the Mavericks benefited from strong bench play, with Erick Dampier collecting 10 rebounds and Stackhouse pumping in 14 points.

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