Frontline rotation vs. Suns without Allen

Malik Allen (back spasms) is out today and joined on the inactive list by JJ Barea and Jerry Stackhouse. Allen’s absence opens up a spot for reserve center Jamaal Magloire, who’s been mostly relegated to inactive duty lately.

“Malik is somebody against big centers like that that we love to be able to play and stretch the floor because he’s such a terrific shooter, so not having that option and not having that option of Stackhouse in games like this, in a perfect world you’d love to have them, but it’s not always a perfect world so somebody else has to step up and do something good for us,” Avery Johnson said.

Magloire hasn’t done much since joining the Mavs, but he does have the kind of size (6-11, 265) that could be needed against Shaquille O’Neal, especially if Erick Dampier gets in foul trouble.

The Mavs will also need more than 12 seconds out of Brandon Bass. Dirk Nowitzki can only do so much physically against Amare Stoudemire. Look for more zone defense today. Not a lot, but more than usual.

“When you’re playing against these teams that really spread you out with a lot of 3-point shooters, you can use it and sometimes if it works you stick with it, but if not you’ve got to try to find something else,” Johnson said. “I’d like our man-to-man defense to be much better than it was the last game.

“We had the highest rated defensive performance we’ve ever had in the history of the rating against Golden State and then we had one of the lower ones in the last three years against LA. If we can find some consistency with our defense, we scored enough points – 108 points should be enough for us to beat most teams.”