"It was like a flashback for the face of the franchise.

Dirk Nowitzki was on the floor, and there across from him was Peja Stojakovic, trying to prove that an old nemesis never goes away. He just comes back in another life form, or at least another uniform.

So Nowitzki did what great players do.

He went back in time himself.

Stojakovic rewound the clock eight or nine years and looked like he was back with Sacramento flinging in 3-pointers that broke the Mavericks' collective back.

Or at least he went back to 2008, when he and Chris Paul and Tyson Chandler dug the Mavericks' playoff grave. "