The good news for the Mavericks Sunday night was that Dirk Nowitzki surprisingly returned, scored 8 points, pulled down rebounds and reported no issues with his arthroscopically repaired right knee after playing 20 minutes.

“That’s encouraging for me, but as a team we’ve got a long way to go,” Nowitzki said. “We’re not very good defensively right now. I think that’s obvious. Offensively, our decision-making is horrible. So we’ve got to work on lot of areas. There’s only one way but up.”

“We just weren’t quick enough on defense,” Nowitzki said. “Our coverages were screwed up left and right.

“Our basketball IQ obviously went down with J-Kidd (leaving). That’s pretty obvious.”

via Brad Townsend of The Dallas Morning News