Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters

Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki drives to the basket against Golden State during Game 5 on Tuesday. The Mavericks won 118-112 to stay alive in the series.

The Warriors hung on the door to their locker room one of the yellow “We Believe” T-shirts that fueled them at home in Games 3 and 4. They’re sure to see more of them when the first-round series shifts back to Oakland. If a Game 7 is needed, it would be in Dallas on Saturday night.

The Mavericks still have work to do to avoid becoming the third No. 1 seed to bow out in the opening round.

However, this is a team that won 67 regular-season games and had winning streaks of 17, 13 and 12. So two more against a team that went 42-40 doesn’t seem impossible.

“Now they have a lot of pressure,” Johnson said, playing the mind games Nellie has worked so far this series. “They have 10,000 pounds on them up in Oakland. They have a lot of pressure to play well and win that game.”

The Mavericks had about as perfect of a start as any team could want, hitting their first five shots — one from each starter — and scoring on their first nine possessions. They led by 16 points midway through the first, then went up by 21 in the second quarter.

But the Warriors began their comeback by hitting seven of eight shots, four of them 3-pointers. They were back within seven at the break, then six before the third quarter started because of a technical foul against Jerry Stackhouse assessed as the teams left the court. A 3 by Richardson tied it at 67 with 7:56 left in the third.

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The Mavs got back up by seven, but went to the fourth up by only three, with the Warriors not about to go away.

Notes: Nowitzki had missed at least two foul shots in every game. ... Austin Croshere, playing on his 32nd birthday, scored nine points (all on 3-pointers) and center DeSagana Diop had 11, the most of any game in his career. ... Stackhouse was mentioned on the latest episode of “The Sopranos,” hitting a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give the Mavs a win over the Spurs, costing lead character Tony Soprano a big wad of cash. Stackhouse found out about it from his brother. Laughing, he said: “I better watch my neck. I’d rather be on Tony’s side, not against him.”

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