Unleash a great player. Dirk

Nowitzki was spectacular and kept an otherwise ordinary team afloat.

Unleash the refs. Crews led by Bennett Salvatore and Steve Javie awarded the Mavericks more free throws in each game than they had earned in any game all season.

Insult and harass Nuggets family members in the house, distracting the Nuggets , requiring security for Kenyon Martin's mother and an early trip back to the hotel for 2-year-old Kiyan Anthony.

One of these strategies will still be available to the Mavs tonight in Game 5 at the Pepsi Center. One will not. The third is up to the refs and their many bosses in the NBA offices on Fifth Avenue.

"All I know is all year long they've been more of a jump-shooting team and we've been an attack-the-rim team, and I don't think that's going to change," Nuggets coach George Karl said Tuesday.

Karl also disclosed he intends to fire his free-throw defense coach, as soon as he figures out who it is. This was his way of calling attention to the freakish numbers in Dallas without incurring a fine. In 82 regular-season games, the Mavericks never attempted more than 39 free throws. In Games 3 and 4 of this series, they attempted 49 and 43.

This could be a result of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban's constant complaining about officiating, which goes back a number of years. More likely, it's the league's response to that imaginative "Thuggets" cry so popular in Dallas these days.

In any case, the game referees were clearly spooked, calling fouls that weren't and missing fouls that were. The flagrant foul called on the Mavs' Jason Terry near the end of the game in some weird form of compensation was a joke.

But this "Thuggets" cry also turned into a license for a small number of Mavericks fans to play thugs themselves. Cuban set it off after Game 3 when he told Kenyon Martin's mother - on Mother's Day weekend, no less - that her son was a thug. This, clearly, was taken as permission by his many followers to unleash in Game 4. By the time Cuban apologized on his blog in the early-morning hours Tuesday for the original remark several hours after the Nuggets left town, his instigation had done its damage.

"That's unacceptable, man," Chauncey Billups said, dismissing the apology. "That's just not right. You're the owner of a team. You're held to a different standard as far as professionalism. Yeah, you can ROOT for your team and all that, but that's just not right."

Billups called the situation in the stands at the American Airlines Center a distraction for players, several of whom inquired into the well-being of their relatives during timeouts.

Although Martin's mom, Lydia Moore, and Carmelo Anthony's fianc?e, La La Vazquez, caught much of the flak - including at least one charming epithet to describe Kiyan, the toddler - they were not alone.

"I had like almost 10 of my people out there," Billups said. "My wife got into a confrontation with a couple people. My dad. Everybody. You've got the right to be a fan. Some of the stuff is just fun, it's just fan stuff, and then sometimes it crosses the line and gets out of control."

In his apology, Cuban said Nuggets family members could watch from a luxury box when they return to Dallas. Since the series will return to Dallas only if the Mavericks win tonight, this constituted trash talking while apologizing. How very Mark Cuban of him.

I mentioned his offer to

Billups.

"I'm sure they'll decline that," he said. "But we don't plan on going back to Dallas."

The irony is that the whole "Thuggets" rap is just a bad rhyme. The Nuggets were sixth in the league in scoring this season. They play fast-

paced, full-court Basketball. If the Bad Boys of Detroit during the Bill Laimbeer era are the prototype thug team, the Nuggets could hardly resemble them less.

But this is what teams do in the playoffs. They complain about the opponent and hope the refs are listening. Meanwhile, league officials, fearing a dreaded "incident," instruct the refs to clamp down on everything. The combination turned the refs in Dallas into pollsters, going the way the wind blew.

Cuban incited the crowd in both cities, then feigned shock when Mavs fans imitated him. Let's hope the referees and fans set a different tone tonight. Cuban won't be here. If the Nuggets want to make him irrelevant for the rest of the postseason, they know what to do.

Dave Krieger: 303-954-5297 or dkrieger@denverpost.com