They proved it so many times over in Tuesday night's fractured loss at Dallas, where they blew a 29-point, third-quarter lead after they had won two of three games in the previous four days.

Never before in their mostly ignominious 20-season history has a Wolves team blown a lead as big as the one they gave away in the final 22 minutes Tuesday.

Leading 70-41 with 94 seconds gone in the second half, the Wolves allowed Dallas both a finishing 66-30 run and the biggest comeback in its history.

Until then, the franchise's biggest blown lead was 25 points in a 114-106 loss to Seattle in March 2007,

"I never really experienced anything like that," guard Randy Foye said afterward in a hushed locker room. "They made their run in the second half and they just kept coming. They wouldn't stop."

Losers of 23 of their first 27 games and winners of two of their previous three, the Timberwolves could do absolutely nothing wrong for the evening's opening 25 minutes.

Then, they couldn't do anything right.

"You can't blame anybody but us," Wolves forward Al Jefferson said. "It was a winnable game. We took bad shots, turned the ball over. That's a good team out there. That's a playoff team. We had them on their home floor down. If we would have made a good run in that third quarter, that would have been it."

The Wolves collapsed on a night when former Wolves head coach Dwane Casey brought the Mavericks home victorious just down the sideline from Kevin McHale -- who hired and fired him -- after Dallas head coach Rick Carlisle was ejected in the second quarter.

"I didn't think about that at all," McHale said about facing Casey. "I was trying to see if we could get a basket to stem the tide a little bit."

MAVERICKS 107, WOLVES 100: Ahead by 29 points just 94 seconds into the second half and trailing by seven at game's end, the Wolves' latest and greatest mystifying loss set not only Minnesota and Dallas franchise records for their biggest lost lead and biggest comeback.

The Mavericks' seven personal fouls recorded also were second fewest by a team in one game in NBA history.

Only Dallas' five in a Nov. 1999 game against San Antonio had fewer by one team.

That number told the story of a Wolves team that thrived with its shooting in building that 70-41 lead, then failed because of it when the Mavs scored 66 of the game's final 96 points.

Ryan Gomes made his first seven shots from the start and had 19 points by the time the second half was 22 seconds old. His teammates followed his lead and delivered a first half when they shot better than 58 percent and threatened to run the Mavericks out of their own building.

And just like that, everything changed.

Their ball movement and their emotion suddenly gone, the Wolves forced too many shots, committed too many turnovers (nine of their 12 after halftime) and turned their offensive thrust away from Al Jefferson, whose 38-point, 16-rebound game only 24 hours earlier delivered an overtime victory over Memphis.

Dallas' Jason Terry scored 24 of his game-high 29 points in the second half, Erick Dampier pounded the offensive glass and Dirk Nowitzki provided just enough willpower to produce a Mavericks comeback bigger than the 25-point deficit they rallied from to beat Denver in overtime in 1994.

Dallas also made eight of 10 three-pointers after halftime.