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.”