Notebook: Shooters keep shooting

Shooters shoot the ball. When they don’t make shots, what can shooters do?

“They keep shooting,” Mavericks coach Avery Johnson said Friday after practice. “They spend a little bit more time just trying to simplify things. They try to get to a spot or two and say, ‘Hey, just let me make it from this spot.’

“But more than that, they talk to their teammates about setting better picks to bring them up a little more. They just try to work themselves out of it. But a shooter never goes to sleep thinking he can’t shoot.”

Sleep probably hasn’t been easy for come by for Jason Terry the last couple of nights. The Jet nearly went seven scoreless quarters before finally getting a shot to fall late in the third quarter of Thursday’s 88-81 home loss to Cleveland.

Terry’s struggles during the two-game losing streak – 3 of 22 (13.7 percent) from the floor – mirror an overall issue going into Saturday’s noon start against Atlanta at American Airlines Center. The Mavs (19-11) can’t buy a basket right now, shooting just 39.3 percent in the back-to-back setbacks to Utah and Cleveland.

Read the rest of this note, a couple more and get a glimpse of the Hawks (tomorrow’s foe) in today’s notebook at mavs.com.