The short-handed Utah Jazz were surprisingly breathing heavily down the Dallas Mavericks’ backs for the majority of Tuesday night. Then,Kyrie Kyrie Irving decided enough’s enough, and took matters into his very own hands.

With Irving scoring 17 of his game-high tying 33 points in the fourth quarter, the Mavs withstood a strong challenge from Utah to slip out of American Airlines Center with a hard-fought 120-116 triumph over the Jazz. The win helped the Mavs conclude this season-high six-game home stand with a 3-3 record while moving to 34-32 overall.

Combined with losses on Tuesday by the Golden State Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves, the Mavs vaulted from seventh to fifth place in the Western Conference standings entering Wednesday’s 6:30 p.m. game in New Orleans. And the late-game heroics by Irving helped propel the Mavs past the Jazz.

“(Irving) loves the moment, he loves to win and he loves to help his teammates win,” coach Jason Kidd said. “As we talked about (Irving) just scoring the ball, but also being able to accept the double-team and get the ball to (Luka Doncic) or whoever the double-team comes from, and the trust that he has with his new teammates is very high.”

After the pesky Jazz led, 105-104, following a three-point play by Talen Horton-Tucker, Irving went to work, scoring 13 of the Mavs’ final 16 points over thKyriee last four minutes. Three free throws by Irving put the Mavs ahead, 118-111, with 1:32 left.

Lauri Markkanen (33 points, six rebounds) drained a pair of free throws and Horton-Tucker powered inside for a basket as the Jazz moved to within 118-115 with just 30.6 seconds to go. And with only 3.7 seconds remaining, Horton-Tucker stepped to the free throw line and made the first charity toss as Utah inched to within 118-116 of Dallas.

However, as Horton-Tucker intentionally missed the second free throw, the ball didn’t connect with anything but the backboard. Thus, by NBA rule, the Mavs took possession.

After he was intentionally fouled, Irving buried a pair of free throws with three seconds left to put this game on ice.

“They were trying to get the ball out of me and Luka’s hands,” said Irving, who also collected six rebounds, eight assists and two steals. “It felt like we did a great job tonight of trying to beat the trap and make their bigs have multiple plays they have to guard. I think we settled in (during) the second half where we started trusting the ball movement, and the ball ended up finding some people where we hit some timely threes that we didn’t hit in the first half.”

In addition to Irving, the Mavs received solid contributions from Doncic (29 points, 10 rebounds, six assists, two steals) and Tim Hardaway Jr. (24 points on 7-of-9 three-pointers). Hardaway also was involved in one of the oddest plays of the game when he Timburied a three-pointer to give the Mavs a 51-37 lead with 8:33 remaining in the first half.

But as Hardaway was drifting back, he turned his left ankle when he accidently stepped on the foot of Jazz coach Will Hardy. As teammates rushed to see if Hardaway was all right – he was on the floor writhing in pain – the officials went to the scorer’s table to review the play for a possible hostile act against Hardy.

No hostile act was levied against Hardy, who told Hardaway, “My bad,” right before play continued.

“You don’t want anybody to ever get hurt, especially when it’s on your foot,” Hardy said. “I was calling timeout. I was standing out of bounds. Obviously, there’s no intent there. I love Tim as a player, but it’s not a good feeling for sure. You’re nervous that he’s really hurt. That’s why I apologized to Tim multiple times. I apologized to Jason multiple times.

“I want to be very clear that’s one of those freak plays. Tim is a great athlete. He shot that shot and back peddled so fast after he shot it and just kind of stepped right on my foot, but your heart sinks. If I’m being honest with you guys it was really hard to concentrate in the timeout with our coaches and our staff because you’re just worried you just seriously hurt somebody. I felt much better when Tim got up out of their timeout and came back into the game — that gave me a little bit of relief. But not my favorite moment of the game for sure. I’m glad he’s OK.”

Hardaway said he got Timhis ankle re-taped at halftime.

“It felt a lot better,” he said. “We’ll see how it is when I get off this flight (to New Orleans).”

Hardaway was a thorn in Utah’s side all night as he popped in five of his three-pointers in the first half, which ended deadlocked at 59.

“Nothing has changed,” Hardaway said, referring to the hot hand he’s displayed lately. “Just the ball has been going in the basket.

“(I’m) taking the looks and stepping into them with confidence — getting my shots early in the clock — trying to take advantage of the (fast) break.”

Kidd was appreciative of the job off the bench turned in by Hardaway, who also picked up a pair of steals and was a game-high plus-17 in the plus/minus department.

“Tim was a big lift for us off the bench as we talked pre-game about his role and what he’s done,” Kidd said. “He was big for us tonight. He’s a shooter, so he’s got to take them.

“He’s getting great looks, his confidence is high and his teammates are looking for him. So when you have that going on during the game as a shooter – I haven’t been there before – but just understanding when your teammates are looking for you, you want to deliver, and that’s what he’s doing right now.”

Doncic also delivered with 18 of his points coming in the first half. And Justin Holiday tallied eight of his 11 points in the third quarter afterHoliday going scoring and missing all four of his shots from the field during the first two quarters.

“In the first half we got a lot of wide-open looks that just didn’t go down, so at halftime we challenged those guys in the corner to be able to make them, and I thought (Holiday) responded in a positive way by making them,” Kidd said. “And then defensively, he came up with a big block on Markkanen’s jump shot, so I thought he was really good tonight.”

Although the Jazz (31-35) were without starters Jordan Clarkson and Walker Kessler — along with top reserve Collin Sexton — Kidd knows wins in the NBA are difficult to come by and are precious when the Mavs are able to collect them.

“The efficiency of scoring is up, so no matter if you’re playing the worst team in the league or the best team, everybody is scoring at a high rate,” Kidd said. “So for us, we’ve got to do better.

“Defensively, we’ve got to figure out how to get stops and then we’ve got to take care of the ball. We had 16 turnovers tonight, which in the last two games we’ve taken care of the ball.”

Kidd also knows Irving, who converted 10-of-18 shots and made all 10 of his free throws, seems to be settling in nicely since the Feb. 6 trade that brought him from the Brooklyn Nets.

“(Irving) was the hot player,” Kidd said. “If he wasn’t scoring, he was finding the open guy or he was causing the double-team, so we played through him down the stretch and he delivered.

“He made some big baskets, but he made some big free throws, too.”

LukaAnd all of it was punctuated by Irving’s dominant performance in the fourth quarter.

“It’s winning time, really,'” Irving said. “I’ve been saying that in my career. That fourth quarter, specifically at my age now, it’s the difference between winning ballgames and losing them.

“The last few games have been really close and we haven’t closed it out as well as we would have liked. I haven’t closed it out as well as I would have liked. Just putting a lot of pressure on myself. Now we just settle in to what’s in front of us and control what we can control, and tonight it could have gone either way against a short-handed Jazz team. You saw that in the effort that we had to come out with in the second half warranted us to play a little harder.”

BRIEFLY: Forward Reggie Bullock went out early in the first half and did not return after suffering a right quad contusion. . .Center JaVale McGee was inactive for Tuesday’s game with a right ankle sprain. . .Former Mavs guard Jason Terry is in his first season as an assistant coach with the Utah Jazz. “I think JET’s a really, really smart basketball coach,” Jazz coach Will Hardy said. “He’s got a ton of basketball experience, obviously, with a long playing career. He’s seen the inside of an NBA locker room, which I think is a really important perspective to have on your staff. No matter how much coaching I do, I’ve never sat in that seat as a player in the locker room, so he adds a really great perspective to our staff in that regard. I think also his experience coaching in the G League not only shows that he’s a basketball junkie in a sense that he just wants to be around the game and he loves to coach, he loves to teach, he loves to be in the gym.” Terry played for the Mavs from 2004-12, was the NBA’s Sixth Man Award winner in 2009, and also was a key player when the Mavs captured the 2011 NBA championship.

Twitter: @DwainPrice

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