Avery goes with eighth starting lineup

Looking to break out of the doldrums, Avery Johnson introduced his eighth different starting lineup tonight against Minnesota. Erick Dampier and Jason Terry made their first starts, joining Dirk Nowitzki, Devin Harris and Josh Howard.

Terry had been used exclusively as the sixth man this season. Dampier, working his way back from offseason shoulder surgery, replaced Gana Diop. Johnson has been critical of the starting lineup lately, and especially the slow starts.

“I haven’t liked our starting lineup the whole year,” he said. “I haven’t like the way we started off games, except Cleveland we got off to a pretty good start.

“But we’ve had some alarms and signals go off early, but I wouldn’t say it’s cause for panic. But we still have a few concerns and we know some of those concerns are only going to be worked out by playing games over and over again.”