By defeating the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday, April 9th, the Dallas Mavericks clinched the best record in the NBA. With five games still to go in the regular season, Jerry Stackhouse and Dirk Nowitzki, the scoring leaders for the Mavs on Monday night have already been told not to go to the final five games.  “I told them if I see them on the plane, I’ll fine them,” Dallas head coach Avery Johnson said.

Dallas won Monday night’s game 96-86 with Nowitzki scoring 26 points and grabbing six rebounds. Stackhouse scored 18 points in just 26 minutes of action, and hit two three-pointers. Clippers head coach Mike Dunleavy said of the defeat - “We tried everything we could do and we did it well some of the time, but we didn’t do it enough, defensively, I thought in the first half we did a great job on Nowitzki, but in the second half we didn’t do as good… we didn’t get good enough help on him at times.”

The Mavericks will be one of the teams to beat in the NBA playoffs. They’ll be looking to finish the job they started last year, after making it to the NBA championship last year, but falling to the Miami Heat four games to two. At this point in the season the second best team in the NBA is the Phoenix Suns, with a 58-19 record. As long as Nowitzki and Stackhouse stay sharp during their time off during the rest of the regular season, Dallas figures to have the upper hand this year in the NBA playoffs.