The Dallas Mavericks defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 104-101 on Wednesday night after blowing a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter and seeing Kyrie Irving score 28 points and make the game-winning 3-pointer with 22 seconds remaining.

In addition to scoring 16 of his 26 points in the fourth quarter and making the game-winning tip-in with 1:16 remaining for the Lakers, NBA lifetime scoring leader LeBron James also committed an error with four seconds remaining and missed the game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer.

“We gave ourselves a fighting chance, but it’s kind of tough when you go down that many points,” James said. “I liked our defense in the last 12 minutes. We’ve just got to be better for the first 36.”

Following a string of misses by James and Luka Doncic in the last minute, Irving calmly made his fourth 3-pointer of the game off a feed from Doncic close to the Lakers bench. After a careless pass from James to the basket was intercepted by Doncic, Irving made two free throws and James missed another three-point effort.

“When you have quarterbacks like Luka and Ky, trust is high,” Dallas coach Jason Kidd said. “A lot of times they’re going to get double-teamed, but Luka makes a heck of a pass, and Ky does what he does. No panic, and he makes a big shot to win.”

The Mavs, who missed 16 of their 19 shots in the fourth quarter, were led by Doncic’s 30 points. The step-slow Lakers had Dallas up 91-71 going into the fourth quarter, but the team missed its first 11 attempts as James started a sustained run.

“Why would you be upset? You won,” Kidd said. “The game is over, and now we move on to get ready for Thanksgiving. There’s no one upset. It’s a great game against a very talented team.”

Despite outscoring Dallas 30–13 in the fourth quarter, Los Angeles was unable to secure a victory. Anthony Davis finished the fourth quarter without scoring, finishing with only 10 points and 14 rebounds.

“We had a shot to win the game,” Davis said. “We got back in it with our defense in the fourth quarter, and (we) made some big-time shots. … We don’t celebrate moral victories, but we’re a resilient team that will be fighting ’til the end.”

Towards the end, the Lakers missed four free throws that would have brought the score closer.

The Mavericks, who are among the NBA’s top scoring teams, defeated the Lakers on the road for the fourth time in a row behind Josh Green’s 15 points.

“We’ve put an emphasis on pushing the pace, and we were able to get out to a 20-point lead,” Green said. “They were on a back-to-back, and we knew that.”

For the Lakers, who had won six straight games over the previous two weeks, D’Angelo Russell had fifteen points and Austin Reaves had seventeen. This season, Los Angeles has only suffered one home loss in nine games.

With only nine healthy rotation players for their sixth game in nine days, the step-slow Lakers were mostly controlled by Dallas for the opening three quarters.

In the third quarter, Dereck Lively was had to be carried to the Dallas locker room after collapsing heavily under the Mavs’ basket. The 7-foot-1 center suffered a lower back injury after colliding with Davis, according to the Mavs.

Along with Jarred Vanderbilt, Gabe Vincent, and youngster Jalen Hood-Schifino, Cam Reddish missed the Lakers game due to groin pain.

In Reddish’s place, Max Christie made his fourth career start and finished with seven goals in 23 minutes.

Maxi Kleber of Dallas missed his eighth consecutive game due to a toe ailment. In March of last year, the Mavs went to the Lakers and, with Doncic out due to injury, Kleber made a game-winning 3-pointer to help them defeat Los Angeles 111-110.