With 12 seconds remaining and his team trailing the Portland Trail Blazers 95-90 on Thursday night, Jason Kidd lined up and let fly from beyond the arc.

J-Kidd released a high-arching shot that found the bottom of the net and appeared to pull the Mavericks to within just two points. Unfortunately for the Mavericks, a referee ruled that No. 2 had his foot on the line and called the shot just a long two-point jumper. The play then went to instant replay and Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News explains the call from there:

"Kidd’s shot with 12.9 seconds left in the game was 
ruled to be a 2-pointer when he took it. The referees took a long look at the replay and left it as a
2-point basket. Many angles of the play left it open to debate whether it 
was a 3-point shot.

Kidd appeared to have a sliver of room between his shoe tip
 and the 3-point arc from an overhead angle. But it’s unknown whether the 
refs had access to that view of the play. The Mavericks were convinced after the fact that the shot should have been a 3-pointer."

The call and the subsequent review killed any late game momentum a trey would have given the Mavs, who dropped Game 3 of the series, 97-92. Dallas now leads the best-of-seven Western Conference Quarterfinal 2-1.

The NBA would rule after the fact that the shot was indeed a three-pointer, but that was of no consolation to the Mavericks.

Nonetheless, Jason’s final stat line was stuffed as he scored eight points to go along with six rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block. Jason hit three of his nine shots from the field, but noted after the game that if he gets those same opportunities and open looks going forward, he’ll make sure the shots fall like they did in Games 1 and 2:

"I was open. Again, I had the same great looks," he said. "If I have those in Game 4, I feel I can knock them down."

Portland, playing on its home court for the first time in the series, used momentum from the crowd and raced out on a 16-7 run to start the game. But No. 2 was able to stop the bleeding with a triple from the right wing at the six-minute mark of the first.

That trey sparked a 16-10 run by the Mavs, as they closed on the deficit, pulling within three of the lead before Brandon Roy ended the quarter with a two. At the end of the opening frame, Dallas trailed by five.

The Mavs’ hot play continued as they exploded for a 16-6 run to start the second and took a 39-34 lead four minutes into the quarter. But Portland countered and at half the Mavs trailed by two, 54-52.

After a Dirk Nowitzki jumper to start the second half knotted the game at 54, J-Kidd found teammate Jason Terry for a triple that gave Dallas a 57-55 lead. A minute-and-a-half later he found Shawn Marion for a short runner. Jason then took matters into his own hands and hit his second triple of the game, this time from the left wing. That trey pushed the Mavs lead to five points with under six minutes to go in the third.

Terry and Nowitzki took over in the second half, as Terry finished with 29 points off the bench while Nowitzki scored 25. But ccording to Jason, the fact that a third Mav was unable to score in double digits was a huge factor in Portland finishing strong and grabbing the win.

Mavs TV play-by-play man Mark Followill said in a recent Q&A that No. 2 continues to be an X-factor in that department:

Do you think that Jason Kidd’s success is as far as the Mavericks go?
"I wouldn’t call it an automatic win but it’s definitely a huge factor. I don’t think he even has to score 20 a night, just run the offense, get them some good shots, play quality defense and knock down some open 3s. He’s arguably the 2nd most important player on the team.

J-Kidd does, however, expect improvement:

"We wasted good performances by Dirk and Jet," he said. "Those guys had it going tonight. The other guys, we all had good looks. They just didn’t go in for us. We’ve got to look at that on tape and in Game 4 be ready to knock down those shots to help those guys out."

DEFYING THE ODDS
It’s no secret that what Jason Kidd has been able to accomplish in his 17th NBA season is basically unheard of for a 38-year-old player.

But as Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal writes after a statistical study, age has very little to do with what makes Jason 2010-2011 season truly unique:

Retaining this extent of point-guard skills is unusual for a player of Kidd’s age. Kidd was 37 on Feb. 1 and turned 38 last month. Just one player had more assists than Kidd in a season in which he was 37 or older on Feb. 1: the NBA’s all-time assists leader, John Stockton; Kidd is second on that list.

While Kidd fills his basic point-guard duties even more efficiently than he did as a young Mav, his scoring style has changed markedly. He had the lowest field-goal percentage this season of any NBA regular, 36.1%. That’s primarily because Kidd was taking more of his shots than any other NBA player from three-point range, nearly two-thirds. (In his first go-around with Dallas fewer than one-third of his field-goal attempts were from behind the arc – his jumper was so iffy his critics used to call him Ason Kidd, because he had no J.) In fact, the proportion of his field-goal attempts from beyond the arc was one of the six highest in any single season since the NBA introduced the three-point shot.

His stats this season make a good case for true-shooting percentage as a better shooting stat than field-goal percentage. Since Kidd takes so many 3s and hits a respectable 34% of them, and is also accurate from the free-throw line, he’s scoring a point per possession used by a shot, for a true-shooting percentage of 50%. That’s not great, but coupled with his other skills it makes him an above-average player in terms of win shares per 48 minutes, a stat that takes into account all facets of the game and usually dings players severely for missing many of their shots.

To read more from Bialik’s study, click here.

NEXT UP
The Mavs remain in Portland to play once more at the Rose Garden with tip-off scheduled for 4 p.m. CST this afternoon.

According to Jason, the Mavs, who committed 16 turnovers in the game 3 loss, will have to cut down on that number should they want to move on to the next round:

"

[The Blazers are] long, so they got their hands on balls and we were trying to make the right play," he said. "I came out and turned the ball over a couple of times, but that happens and we’re down two on the road at halftime, and it’s anybody’s ballgame."

Game 4 will be televised locally on KTXA and nationally on TNT.

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