“Well, I give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s really not that type of player,” Nowitzki said. “He hasn’t been his entire career. I’m not really sure what he was trying to do there, if he was trying to get to the ball through my legs or anything. But like I said, he’s not a dirty player.
“But I really enjoyed his tight grip he got. I really enjoyed that.”
Nowitzki was laughing as he said that last line.
“He just said he didn’t mean to, that he was just trying to play defense and that his hand got caught where he didn’t want it to get caught, I guess,” he said. “But like I said, he’s a good dude.”
Cuban was less forgiving. He said Livingston said after the game that he didn’t do anything on purpose.
“He said, I’m not a dirty player,” Cuban said of the 11-year veteran. “I said, no one plays post defense and does that in normal post defense. That’s not normal post defense. It was obvious.
“The fact that they didn’t throw him out, the league will look at it. I’m not asking for a suspension. I just thought … Kerr said he didn’t see it. I said, fine. I just think it’s wrong.”
As Tyson Chandler said: “I didn’t see it when it happened. I saw it after it happened. The play was what it was. That’s never called for and not very manly.”
The Mavericks were mostly offended that a player would commit that sort of violation, especially on the seventh-leading scorer in NBA history.
“If they called a flagrant foul on it, then there had to be something there,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “You don’t want to see stuff like that, especially on guys like Dirk. It’s not appropriate. It’s just not right.”