A local radio host in Dallas asked me on the air last week. Editors and colleagues have been asking me, too. Even Dirk Nowitzki turned things around and asked me for my take when I told him this is the hot question going around.

Isn't all this winning in the regular season putting even more pressure on the Mavericks?

To which I say … huh?

How could there be more pressure on the Mavericks than they had when the season started?

Right.

Not possible.

The Mavs were on the heartbreak end of the worst collapse/greatest comeback in NBA Finals history, depending on your perspective/rooting interests. This season, then, they were always going to be graded on a champs-or-failures basis.

As Nowitzki has been saying almost daily throughout a 17-game win streak that was finally halted Monday night in a 117-100 hammering administered by, of all teams, Don Nelson's Golden State Warriors: "If we go 82-0, it doesn't really mean anything if we don't win it all."

So let's consider the alternatives, knowing that the postseason, in this case, is everything.

You could zoom through the regular season as Dallas has, dominating so thoroughly that you pretty much dodge all scrutiny until March, when the whiff of a run at 70 wins finally swipes some focus from the teams soaked in drama to attract some national inspection.

Or it could play out as an interminable slog just to get to the playoffs, with several more clunkers like Monday's to prompt skeptical pundits to dredge up frequent reminders of your Finals failings and wonder aloud if you really did blow your best shot to be champs … offshoots of a theory circulated frequently in the immediate aftermath of Dallas failing to turn a virtual 3-0 series lead over Miami into a title.

Given the choice, if you could step into the Mavericks' sneaks, I'm guessing you'd opt for the 52-10 ride.

"The first four games was the longest part of the season," Mavs swingman Jerry Stackhouse told me recently, referring to Dallas' 0-4 start. "Since then, the season has kind of breezed by."

With the playoff obstacles and challenges that await in the West alone, who wouldn't take breezy now?

Back in October, when the Mavs convened for training camp, I was convinced that they were facing the longest 82-game grind of any team in the league, since they couldn't feed their hunger for vengeance or answer any of our (or their own) deepest curiosities about this group's ability to rebound psychologically until they got back to the playoffs.

I remember hitting Stackhouse with that theory and I remember him largely agreeing with me. "Seven months before the fun part even starts," Stack said at the time.

But I was wrong. Except for a couple humbling losses to their old pal Nellie -- one in November during the 0-4 start and Monday night's shocking rout after going 44 days without a loss -- this regular season couldn't be more of a wind-swept frolic. Which they've welcomed, as you'd imagine, after the depths they sank to in June.

The Mavs are on course to finish with a win total that: (A) appears headed for the high 60s; (B) will almost certainly present an opportunity to get back to the Finals without being forced to play Phoenix and San Antonio in the West playoffs; and (C) has led to a championship for every team in history before them on a similar pace.

Yet they're not wearing themselves out in the process because, unlike Detroit last season in its 64-18 season gone awry, Dallas is the deepest team in the league. By a comfortable margin. So deep that Nowitzki, in contrast to bosom buddy Steve Nash in Phoenix or the Pistons' 2005-06 starters, can play at an MVP level but seemingly save some gas for later, as opposed to driving himself to pre-playoff exhaustion.

The Mavs have been such a drama-free steamroller to this point -- 11-0 in the second game of back-to-backs, remember, before this embarrassment in Oakland -- that they've enjoyed several months almost devoid of media intrusion. It's the teams with issues that generally attract extra attention, whether it's an Atlantic Division that houses just one team with a winning record … or a Denver club still trying to get Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson clicking … or those defending champs who had to live without Shaquille O'Neal for 40 games and have no idea whether Dwyane Wade can realistically be sturdy enough to carry them in May and June.

I'm sure it'll be suggested in coming days and weeks, especially if the Mavs have the temerity to pump out one more double-digit win streak, that their season will be regarded as a catastrophe for the ages -- even bigger than last season's -- should they fail to lift the trophy after all this dominance.

But I'm just as sure that the Mavs' extraordinary regular-season hasn't created an added burden that Mavs players feel.

For starters, no matter how breezy these first 62 games were, Avery Johnson won't let them delude themselves into thinking that the Suns and Spurs are any easier to take down in the playoffs than they've ever been.

Furthermore …

After last June's torturous swoon?

How much more desperate to win it all -- and shut us all up -- can they be?

"Everybody's going to say what they're going to say," Stackhouse says. "We hear all the stuff. We hear the prognosticators saying that we're a regular-season team.

"So we want to blow everyone away. We want to be impressive in the regular season and be impressive in the post-season."

Then there's the Nowitzki approach: Pretend to be interested in the hot topic when you're really not and invite the media gnat to answer his own question.

"We don't care about all that stuff you guys talk about," he said. "We just play."

Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here.

• Dimes Past: March 1 | 2 | 3-4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10-11 | 12

Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images

Could the Warriors give Josh Howard's Mavs an unexpected first-round headache? They've won the teams' last four meetings.

End Of The Streak

Another Mavericks streak came to an end Monday: They had won the last 30 games in which they scored at least 100 points. Their only loss of that kind this season was also to the Warriors, 107-104 on Nov. 6. Only two other teams in NBA history won as many consecutive games in one season when scoring at least 100 points: the 1995-96 Bulls had a 38-game streak and the 1971-72 Lakers had a 33-game streak (which was also their NBA-record 33-game winning streak).

To put it another way: The Mavs are 0-2 when scoring at least 100 points against the Warriors this season and 30-0 when scoring at least 100 points against any other team.

• Elias Says