<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">MEMPHIS - You could make a worthy argument that it was as impressive a playoff game as the franchise has ever contested. But don't look for any confetti. Nor champagne. Nor locker room high-fiving. Nor any cries of "Bring on the Spurs!" On a night when the Mavericks carved up the Memphis Grizzlies with surgical precision, 102-76, like good doctors they washed up, shut up and headed for home Monday night. To await...whom? What? When? Whoever it is and wherever it begins, the challenge for Round Two has been thrown down. These are not your uncle's Mavericks. Especially not your Uncle Nellie's. Gifted with what amounted to four chances to close out the series, coach Avery Johnson's Mavericks opted Monday for the quick knockout. They seldom stood still on offense. Their passing was almost relentlessly unselfish. For the fourth time in four games, the Mavericks dominated the boards. And on defense, they grabbed a firm bite on the Grizzlies in the middle of the second quarter and refused to let go. It was exhilarating to watch -- and exhausting. Memphis coach Mike Fratello remembered the moment when the game slipped away. The Grizzlies trailed by a single point with a little more than four minutes remaining until halftime. "But we gave up an open three right there by Dirk [Nowitzki]," Fratello said. "They went on a run. And all of a sudden, their lead was up to nine points. "That's where they broke our spirit." Though the Grizzlies, again, didn't play all that poorly, the game quickly turned into a one-sided rout. Nowitzki, who finished with 27 points in 35 minutes, talked about the Mavericks playing with a "killer instinct." Once upon a time, the Mavericks -- Don Nelson's Mavericks -- had little that resembled any killer instinct. Now, instead of out-dancing playoff opponents, the Mavs are trying to frisk and disarm them. The huge margin likely sends a loud message to the rest of the Western Conference playoff teams. "Not at all," Mavericks guard Jason Terry countered. "This is not about sending a message. It's about: 'Are you playing your style of basketball?' "That was the most important thing to come out of this." Throughout the subdued Mavericks locker room, other voices could be heard saying the same thing. The Mavericks aren't just playing good defense. They're talking about it. Go figure. "We're working on our goals," the Mavericks' Jerry Stackhouse explained. "It was about getting better, looking sharper over the past three games." Stackhouse mentioned The Number -- the team's nightly defensive rating, as kept on the bench by assistant Paul Mokeski. The grading system tallies the team's defensive mistakes -- both the subtle and the not-so-subtle -- and divides by the number of opponents' possessions. A rating in the 60s is good, bordering on unbeatable. A grade in the 70s must be like a Turkish prison. According to Stackhouse, the Mavericks had a 55 defensive rating in Game 1 of the Memphis series, a 58 in the second game, and a 62 in Saturday's overtime win in Game 3. "We were trying to get 70 tonight," Stackhouse said. "I'll be interested to see what we got." And this, remember, was a game that the Mavericks really didn't have to win. They could have easily shuffled through the evening, teased the FedEx Forum audience, and gone back to American Airlines Center on Wednesday to wrap it up in front of their home fans. To listen to the Mavericks, however, that was never an option. "This was good for our mental psyche," Terry explained. "We still believe that we can play a lot better on both ends of the floor. That's the edge we have working for us now." And now they wait. Wait for San Antonio. Or whoever.</div> Source
