Harris and Miller have a history

Devin Harris had no doubt Josh Howard would be at his side. Better yet, in Brad Miller’s face.

“If anything ever escalates or anything ever happens, I know he has my back and it’s the same way [with me],” Harris said late Tuesday night. “It’s unfortunate that situation happened, but it happened the way it did.”

What happened was one of those incidents the NBA would rather not see, but one that sometimes can’t be avoided. Miller, the veteran Sacramento center, knocked Harris over with a hard two-handed shove in the second quarter of the Mavericks’ 101-99 win in Las Cruces, N.M., leading to Howard’s retaliation – a forearm up near Miller’s head.

Miller is one of the league’s more aggressive personalities on the court, so the move wasn’t surprising. The reason and his explanation afterwards were. He decided to take out his frustrations on Harris after being tangled up with Mavs rookie Nick Fazekas under the basket.

“Sometimes you mean to just grab a guy, to get the foul so you can talk to the ref,” Miller said. “I guess I got stronger over the summer.”

Harris wasn’t buying it. Told of Miller’s logic shortly after the Mavs arrived in Houston, Harris just shook his head and said it’s best to just move on.

But it’s not the first time he’s run into Miller. Literally.

“About three times by my count,” Harris said today after practice at the Toyota Center, site of Thursday night’s meeting with the Rockets. “He sets those screens in the backcourt and my first year he got me real bad. He knocked me out of a game. We’ve had a couple more since.”

If you want to read more, go to mavs.com: Got your back.