It’s no time for insult to injuries

Ah, spring, when a young NBA player’s fancy turns to fear, at least if he’s in the West.

I know this isn’t a scoop, but it’s not easy to bring key players back, and the Lakers are running out of time.

But then, who isn’t?

Things are tough all over the West as the Lakers and Dallas Mavericks, for whom many of the same realities apply, could have told you before the Lakers won Friday’s shootout, 112-108, and made things even tougher for the Mavericks.

See if this sounds familiar:

The Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki, playing in his second game after returning from his ankle injury, scored 27 points.

The Lakers’ Pau Gasol, playing in his second game after returning from his ankle injury, scored 25 points.

Of course, the Lakers are still waiting for the return of Andrew Bynum, which seemed set for next week on their trip to Sacramento and Portland or shortly thereafter. . . .

Or sometime after that, we learned before Friday’s game when Jackson raised the possibility Bynum might not be back in the regular season.

“Oh, sure, it’s a possibility,” Jackson said.

“We’re taking him along on this road trip to see how he does, just monitoring him step by step. Everything is a step-by-step process here.”

If you think they’re getting a lot of key pieces back awfully late, so does Jackson, whose approach usually runs from meditative calm to Mad Magazine’s “What, Me Worry?”

“There’s nothing else I can do about it,” Jackson said last week at practice. “It’s just the way it is.”

Then there are the Mavericks, who are a lot like the Lakers, just farther down in the standings.

Struggling to adjust to Jason Kidd, they lost Nowitzki for four games, losing three before Wednesday’s dramatic return in their 111-86 victory over Golden State.

That put them two games ahead of the Warriors and gave them the season series. It was also the Mavericks’ first victory over a winning team with Kidd, after losing to the first 10 winning teams they played.

Not that it was a hard time, but after the Lakers’ win in Dallas, owner Mark Cuban and Coach Avery Johnson had a loud argument. In recent weeks, Cuban, a famed blogger himself, barred bloggers from the dressing room, only to be reversed by the league office.

Cuban then announced he would let all bloggers in, including “kids who blog on their middle school website” to show how untenable that would be.

That lasted until a blogger who ran the site FireAvery.com applied for a credential. They turned him down, with Cuban e-mailing him, “Your blog hasn’t been in existence long enough to qualify and for common sense reasons, we wouldn’t credential you even if it were.”

Somehow, the Mavericks held together through all that, playing with a desperation against Golden State that Johnson thought was overdue.

“It was good to see,” said Johnson before Friday’s game. “I’ve been waiting. I thought the last time we played the Lakers at home, they were a desperate team. They came out and you could see it in their eyes and we just didn’t have it.

The Golden State game “was one of the first times I’ve seen it and hopefully we’ll keep it.”

The Mavericks kept it through the first half, with Kidd pushing the ball up the court and the Lakers sauntering back. With little resistance, Dallas shot 58%, led by as many as 14 points and went to halftime up, 64-54.

The Mavericks still had it in the third quarter when Kidd, fighting Vladimir Radmanovic for a loose ball, knocked it away, crawled after it on his hands and knees, dove for it and flipped it to Jason Terry, who broke away for a layup.

The Lakers finally discovered their desperation about that time, chased the Mavericks the rest of the way and finally came from three points down in the last 1:14.

As you might have guessed, the Lakers still have things to work on, such as their defense, but who can think about that now?

They have moved into a tie for second place with San Antonio. If the Lakers can beat out the Spurs, they can open the playoffs with the No. 7-seeded team:

The Mavericks.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com