DALLAS (AP) – Jason Terry likes being king of the mountain, numero uno, the guy everyone else is trying to catch. He’s talking, of course, about being the best pool player on the Dallas Mavericks, and that gaudy championship belt hanging in his locker.

What, you thought he meant something else?

Such as the Mavericks, with a 51-9 record, a 16-game winning streak and a 23-game home winning streak, cruising toward one of the best records in NBA history?

Sorry. Those things don’t matter much – not now, at least – to a club still smarting from a flameout in last year’s NBA finals.

“It’s easy for us to tune it out, just knowing we haven’t accomplished anything,” Terry said. “We’re a team that has a goal in mind. Until we accomplish that goal, we’re focused on the task at hand.”

Since watching Miami celebrate a title on their own court, the Mavericks have thought solely about getting back and finishing the job. Every practice, film session, shootaround and even games are viewed through the prism of what will work best in the playoffs.

Coach Avery Johnson began pushing that mind-set last season. It settled in nicely as Dallas tied a franchise record with 60 wins, then went to the finals for the first time.

But after going up 2-0, the Mavericks blew a big, late lead in Game 3 and never recovered. The Heat won four straight games, leaving Dallas with its longest losing streak since Johnson took over in March 2005.

The Mavericks stewed over it all summer, then came back and opened this season with four more losses in a row.

They’ve lost only five of their 56 games since, a remarkable .911 winning percentage.

And they’re nowhere near satisfied.

With 22 games left, the Mavericks would have to win them all to break the record of 72 wins set by the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. They’d have to win all but one to match the mark.

A more realistic goal might be 19-3, which would give them 70 wins, second most in league history. Yet this team doesn’t set those kind of goals.

“We’re a hungry basketball team because we don’t have what we’ve been looking for,” Johnson said. “Even though we may have a decent record, we still haven’t been awarded anything yet.”

Treating the regular season like one long preseason is understandable for a club that’s already notched its seventh straight 50-win season.

But it’s kind of a shame, too.

The Mavs are failing to savor what they’ve already accomplished, from being the sixth-fastest team with 50 wins to having the fourth-best record after 60 games to going 10-0 in February, marking the first perfect month in franchise history and the first in the league since the 1996 San Antonio Spurs, a club that featured a left-handed point guard named Avery Johnson.

Consider these tidbits:

• The Mavericks improved to 36-2 since Dec. 13 with a victory Tuesday night. At that point, Detroit was the only Eastern Conference team with more wins all season (37). It’s the best 38-game spurt in league history – better than the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, who won a record 72 games, and better than the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers, who won 33 in a row on the way to a then-record 69. Those Bulls and Lakers teams went on to win NBA championships.

• In addition to the ongoing 16-game winning streak, Dallas has runs of 12 and 13 games. No team has had that many streaks last that long in the same season. Only three other teams have cracked double digits three times. Two of them, the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks and the 1999-2000 Lakers, went on to win the title.

• Dallas already has clinched a playoff spot and is closing in on the second division title in team history. As good as the Mavericks have been in recent years, the Spurs usually were better.

, but the balance of power shifted when Dallas won an intense series last postseason. Now the gap has widened, with the Mavs holding a comfortable division lead.

– After every home game, Johnson passes a fan-filled bar as he walks from his news conference to his office. Fans cheer him, and he always waves back.

When the Mavericks play their next home game, against Phoenix on Wednesday night, it will be a day shy of 15 weeks since he made that walk following a loss. To put that in perspective, 15 weeks after the Suns game will be the eve of the NBA draft.

“The only streak we’re really concerned about is putting together good games consistently,” Terry said. “I think that’s all Avery. He’s embedded that into our minds.”

Even the mind of team owner Mark Cuban.

“What streaks?” Cuban wrote in an e-mail. “It’s a process. We have a lot of room to improve. A lot. We aren’t consistent for 48 minutes and our offense gets out of sync. We just have to stay healthy and keep getting better.”

Johnson used a four-day layoff this week to work toward both goals. Practices were geared toward specific things he wanted to work on, but there also was enough down time for players to rest up for the stretch drive. They may not have this many days off again until after the playoffs.

They return with three games in four nights, all against teams that have beaten them this season: the Lakers in Los Angeles on Sunday night, Golden State in Oakland on Monday night, then home for the Suns. Soon after, they play nine of 11 on the road, starting with six in a row.

“You don’t go through what we went through in the finals without getting kind of an edge about yourself,” Terry said. “Look back at the (Bad Boys-era) Pistons’ struggles before they finally won it, the Bulls before they took their step. There was something about them that when they came back the next year that just said, “We’re not going to be denied.’ That’s where our mind and our focus is.”

AP-ES-03-08-07 1338EST

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