After playing Milwaukee Thursday night, the Mavericks have 10 games left against Eastern Conference teams.

Is that good or bad?

Well, in this crazy NBA season, that’s one thing that has not changed.

It’s a great thing.

The Mavericks owned a 12-7 record against Eastern Conference opponents before seeing the Bucks, who of course are not your plain-vanilla sort of Eastern Conference team.

That’s not a season-making (or season-breaking) record against the East. But it’s a good record. And it has kept them apace with most of their Western Conference brethren when it comes to taking care of business against the opposite conference.

The West, as has been the case in recent seasons, have a solid winning record against Eastern teams – 179-147 going into Thursday’s games.

That’s not a huge disparity, but it’s a positive indicator that the West still needs to take care of business against the Eastern Conference because, as the Mavericks found out Wednesday at Houston, any team in the West can jump up and bite you.

“I think you could build any argument you want about the importance of winning games, globally, in this league,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “The East is pretty significantly improved from other years. There are teams that have not done very well in recent years that are doing significantly better this year.

“But I would say categorically that every game is going to be really important. It’s going to be a blur through the end of the season with the density of the schedule and frequency of games.”

This season, inter-conference games take on added importance because there’s a higher percentage of them. Teams only play 42 games against teams in their own conference and 30 against the other conference.

In a normal 82-game season, there are 52 games played against conference foes.

Milwaukee coach Mike Budenholzer said he is a fan of the schedule that the NBA adopted for this year.

“Generally speaking, I probably like it,” he said. “We might all like a 72-game schedule. I don’t know that that’s going to ever fly. Sometimes, playing teams in your own conference four times can get a little monotonous. There are some things I’ve liked about the flow.”

Here’s a look at how Western Conference teams have done so far against the East (all records through Wednesday).

Utah                  22-5.

Phoenix            14-6.

Memphis          14-6.

Denver              16-7.

LA Clippers      14-8

Portland            14-7.

Mavericks         12-7

San Antonio     11-7.

LA Lakers        12-8.

Golden State   12-13.

Oklahoma City  9-11.

Sacramento        12-15.

New Orleans       9-12.

Minnesota           4-17.

Houston              4-18.

TOTAL              179-147.

Porzingis goose egg revisited: After Wednesday’s loss at Houston, Kristaps Porzingis was asked about his lack of touches in seven scoreless fourth-quarter minutes. He did not get a shot while he was on the floor.

His response, after a pregnant pause, was: “Good question. It’s just the plays we were running. Happened before, also.”

Before Thursday’s game, Carlisle was asked about issue and said it’s up to him to make sure everybody is involved, especially Porzingis on a night when he was shooting the ball well.

“KP almost always has one of the better defenders from the other team on him,” Carlisle said. “And most of the time, teams are in a switching defense. (On Wednesday), we were attacking weaker defenders that were guarding other players. When he stands beyond the 3-point line, his guy is glued to him. And essentially down the stretch we were playing a four-on-four game and getting into the lane every time.

“It’s a balance, for sure. I talked to him today about some things that we can do to keep him more involved that will combat some of the switching and keep him on the move somewhat. When that happens and we don’t win the game, this kind of thing is going to come up.

“As the coach, I’ve got to reconcile and balance all these things and try to make sure we’re doing the right things during all stretches of the game.”

On the bright side, Porzingis was back in action on Thursday against Milwaukee, just the third time this season he’s played both ends of back-to-back games.

“He only played this (Houston) game since, I think, the New York game,” Carlisle said. “So a significant amount of time (off) before this game and then two days between this game and the next (on Sunday vs. San Antonio), so that’s a factor. And he feels good.”

Twitter: @ESefko

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