Avery Johnson got one of those quizzical looks on his face when he was asked about the milestone he was about to hit.

"What milestone?" the coach asked.

A win Saturday night, which came the hard way in a squeaker against Memphis, was going to be the 150th victory of his coaching career, coming in only 191 games, the fastest any NBA coach has reached 150 victories.

The fact that Johnson had no idea about the mark shows just how much it means to him. But it is a remarkable run and proves two things:

One, very few coaches get the chance to step into elite, winning situations in their first coaching jobs. Most of them have to go through bad seasons first.

Second, the Mavericks have been very good at staying in the moment and not taking the regular season for granted.

"We owe it to our fans and to our organization and Mark [Cuban] and to ourselves to try to win every game," Johnson said. "We try to win every game, but we want more help from our bench so we won't have to overuse Dirk every single game."

As for the 150-win mark, Johnson would only say: "I'm just glad I'm still hanging around."

Maybe he should keep quiet: About a week ago, Johnson lamented the fact that the Mavericks weren't shooting more free throws. They were 17th in the league in attempts at the time, but first in percentage, making nearly 89 percent.

"Ever since I brought up that free throw stat a week or so ago, we've been going downhill," he said after the Mavericks went to the line 40 times Saturday, but made only 28 (70 percent).

"At least we got our attempts up now. Our percentage hasn't been really good. Hopefully, we'll have a combination of both sometime next week."

After Saturday, they're down to 82 percent as a team.

Most disturbing, Dirk Nowitzki has hit just 20-of-29 free throw attempts on the home stand. Last season, he hit better than 90 percent.

Steady Eddie not ready: Eddie Jones is improving daily while doing aerobic workouts in the swimming pool to avoid putting any weight or impact work onto his injured right ankle.

Jones said he has a slight high ankle sprain. He said it happened as he scrambled for a loose ball early this month in a game against Houston.

"I felt that twinge up high on the leg, and I thought it was broken. I thought it was curtains."

Sometime next week, Jones hopes to return to practice.

*Year milestone was reached