The league-leading San Antonio Spurs streaked past the slumping Dallas Mavericks to record a comfortable 101-89 win over their Southwest Division rivals on Friday.

The red-hot Spurs have won five in a row to improve to 34-6 and lead the Mavericks (26-12), losers of four in a row, by seven games in the division.

San Antonio had extended scoring runs throughout the contest, building a game-high 24-point lead by the end of three quarters before resting their starters for much of the final period.

We didn't want to take them lightly, Spurs forward Tim Duncan said. We know they're dealing with a bunch of injuries and everything else, but we wanted to come out and jump on them early, try to sustain and we did a pretty good job of that.

The Spurs seized control of the game with a 12-2 run in the first quarter to take an 18-9 lead, and pushed their advantage to as much as 19 points in the first half that finished with San Antonio leading 57-42.

A lot of things went wrong, Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. The first three quarters were very difficult. We're playing a great team that is playing extremely well, and we just got outplayed. There's not much more to say than that.

DeJuan Blair had 18 points and 13 rebounds for the Spurs and Duncan had 16 points and 12 rebounds. Tony Parker also had 18 points.

Shawn Marion led the Mavericks with 14 points while leading scorer Dirk Nowitzki missed his ninth game in a row with a knee injury.

Obviously, they're playing without Dirk, and we wanted to make sure we focused and had a good start and played aggressively, so we did, Parker said. We got lucky. They didn't have Dirk, and we took advantage of it.

NBA