ARCO Arena continued to be a spur in the hide of the Texas teams on Monday, as the Kings sent the Mavs home with a stunning, amazing, compelling, thrilling and many other -ing verb performance, 122-120.

The Kings have now defeated ALL THREE Texas teams at home, which is something I just didn’t think possible, quite frankly.

If you didn’t see the game I am truly sorry. It had everything. Kevin Martin scored 39 points on 16 shots. Yeah. He averaged about 2.5 points per shot. That is disturbing and nigh unholy. Also, he came off the bench and played just 27 minutes. In his two games back since his groin injury he has shot an absolutely stupid 21-for-25 from the field (84%), while averaging 32 points.

John Salmons hit a driving (was it a shot or a layup or…) with 2.4 seconds left to seal the deal. He went berserk after the final buzzer, which was good to see because he is usually more stoic than the angriest of scarecrows.

Wednesday marks the return of Mike Bibby and possibly the incredibly fast-healing Ron Artest. This team at full strength might be really, really good. At 15-21 a playoff run isn’t such an absurd notion.

Hey, folks. I’m not usually an optimist, but this team is fun and I love it.