Mavs Lose In Phoenix
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PHOENIX — Guard Eric Bledsoe scored a game-high 25 points and guard Gerald Green had 22 points and four of Phoenix’s 15 3-pointers as the Suns rang up their seventh win in their last eight games with a 123-108 victory over the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night.
Forwards Channing Frye had 18 points for Phoenix, which set a season high for points and margin of victory and followed Friday night’s rally from a 21-point deficit in Denver with another win.
The Suns have won 11 of their last 15 games and improved to six games above .500 (16-10) for the first time since the Suns went 54-28 and reached the Western Conference finals in 2009-10. Phoenix didn’t win its 16th game last season — when the Suns went 25-57 — until a Jan. 30 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 46th game.
Forward Dirk Nowitzki scored 21 points and guard Monta Ellis and forward Brandon Wright had 19 each for the Mavericks, who blew a 19-point lead at home to the Toronto Raptors on Friday night and have now lost on back-to-back nights.
Green and Frye each had four 3-pointers and Bledsoe had three as the Suns went 15-for-30 beyond the arc, including 7-for-10 in the first quarter. The Suns have now made at least seven made 3-pointers in a franchise-record 18 games — and they got an early start.
Frye’s second 3-pointer within a minute capped an early 8-0 run to give Phoenix a 15-6 lead. Then Green, who had six 3-pointers in Friday night’s comeback win in Denver, hit his first three bombs off
the bench before Bledsoe gave the Suns a 15-point lead at 36-21 on a 3-pointer with 1:09 left.
Dallas cut the lead to 38-25 at the end of the quarter and whittled down the Phoenix lead with a 13-5 run to open the second, with two Nowitzki free throws inching Dallas within 43-38 with 6:58 left.
With Phoenix missing five of six 3-point shots in the quarter, Dallas got as close as 56-54 on a fast-break dunk by Ellis with 1:30 to go. But the Suns scored five points in the final 10.9 seconds to take a 63-58 lead at the half.
The Suns expanded their lead to as many as 12 points in the third quarter, when forward PJ Tucker had seven points and five rebounds.
Dallas got as close as six points in the fourth quarter. An Ellis free throw made it 100-94 with 8:31 left, but Frye answered with a 3-pointer and hit another with 5:40 left to make it 110-99 Suns. Frye had 10 points in the fourth quarter.
