You can also find this post and many more basketball thoughts at Jonathan Tjarks' blog, The Pattern of Basketball.
This game was just about over until Rick Carlisle reached all the way to the very bottom of his bag of tricks and wound up with Salah Mejri, the 29-year old third string C from Tunisia who had played a grand total of 45 minutes in the NBA coming into Friday. Mejri is apparently an OKC killer because he had a great showing against the Thunder - 17 points, 9 rebounds and 8 shots - when the Mavs rested all of their guys last week.