The San Antonio Spurs are down to the final game of the regular season and still have something — a lot, in fact — to play for when they host the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday at the AT&T Center.
The Spurs have already clinched a spot in the postseason for the record-tying 22nd straight season but need to beat the Mavericks to guarantee that they will avoid playing defending NBA champion Golden State in the first round of the playoffs.
What’s more, a victory combined with a loss by Oklahoma City on the road against Milwaukee would net San Antonio the sixth seed in the Western Conference with Houston, Denver or Portland as their opening-round opponent.
The Spurs (47-34) return home after winning twice in a row on a three-game road trip, with the latest victory a 112-90 win at hapless Cleveland on Sunday.
LaMarcus Aldridge scored 18 points, 16 of them in the first half when San Antonio built a big lead, and Patty Mills, DeMar DeRozan and Davis Bertans added 14 points each for the Spurs in the win, which allowed the team to match its win total from the 2017-18 season.
San Antonio is focused on finishing the regular season with the momentum that a three-game win streak would bring, even if those three wins were against teams that will not play in the postseason. The Spurs have struggled at times against the league’s lesser teams losing to Chicago and New York this season, two squads that have combined to win just 39 games this season.
“We’ve dropped a lot of games we should have won throughout the season,” Mills recently told reporters. “But we’ve put in the bank what we’ve learned from the tough games and tough losses and really put it into these last two games, being able to click and get a sense coming together at an important point heading into the playoffs.”
If the Spurs beat Dallas on Wednesday, head coach Gregg Popovich will tie Lenny Wilkens for the most total wins — regular season and playoffs — by any coach in NBA history.
To add to the importance of the game it will be the final in the NBA career of the Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki, who officially announced his retirement on Tuesday.
After being asked about his retirement all season but being non-committal, the 21-year veteran told the crowd Tuesday after Dallas’ 120-109 home win over Phoenix that he had played his final home game and that this would be his last season.
Dallas (33-48) finished its home schedule on Tuesday night with a rousing win during which Nowitzki scored a season-high 30 points, including the first 10 of the game for the Mavericks, and added eight rebounds in 33 minutes.
Nowitzki made his emotional announcement following a game that was filled with video tributes and special-guest appearances. “As you guys might expect, this is my last home game,” he told the capacity crowd at American Airlines Center.
Nowitzki seriously considered coming back to play one more season as the prospect of competing alongside the Mavericks’ talented, young corps that next season will include Kristaps Porzingis, had to be tantalizing for the cagey 40-year-old German.
“The person he is everybody knows and I don’t know if this franchise is ready for post-Dirk,” injured Mavericks guard J.J. Barea said in the locker room before the game. “It’s going to be tough without him.”
There will be one more chance to see Nowitzki play, and perhaps it’s fitting that the game will be against the Mavericks’ Lone Star State rival.
The Spurs have won the three previous games this season against Dallas and own a 111-68 all-time mark against the Mavericks, including a 62-27 record in games played in the Alamo City.