CHARLOTTE, North Carolina, (Reuters) – Dirk Nowitzki and Jason Terry led a second-half charge to help the Dallas Mavericks continue their unbeaten run over the Charlotte Bobcats with a 89-84 victory on Monday.
Nowitzki registered a team-high 27 points and Terry put in 20 as the duo combined to score their team’s final 15 points to help the Mavericks (40-21) come from behind to win their eighth straight.
“I thought we were really great defensively in the second half,” Dirk Nowitzki told reporters. “We definitely picked up the energy a little bit.”
The victory meant a first eight-game win steak for the Southwest Division leaders since 2007, with Caron Butler returning to the team and scoring 22 points after missing two games because of a bad reaction to medication.
The team is 8-1 since trading for Butler during All-Star weekend.
In their first game since Hall of Famer Michael Jordan had agreed to buy the team, the Bobcats built a 12-point lead in the third quarter with their future owner sitting courtside but they failed to claim what would have been a first victory over the Mavericks.
With the loss, the Bobcats, who are trying to make their first postseason, fell into a tie with the Miami Heat for eighth place in the Eastern Conference.
“We’ve got to get past it somehow,” said Charlotte guard Raymond Felton.
“We don’t want this to be another season where we could have and we should have. We’ve got to work through the kinks and work through the problems we’re having right now.”
The Bobcats wayward shooting cost them at the end as they closed to four points back with 1:05 left in the game but missed three straight field goal attempts.
Stephen Jackson scored 20 and Tyrus Thomas added 16 and 12 rebounds for Charlotte (28-30), who lost for the fifth time in seven games.