Chandler Parsons has come a long way this season.

The restrictions on his playing time because of offseason knee surgery seem like forever ago.

That Houston game in which he dropped in 31 points but the Mavericks were outscored by 30 while he was on the floor?

Just a fading memory.

Parsons' interesting season continued to come into sharper focus Sunday night as he dropped in 29 points to go with six rebounds and four assists in a 128-101 victory over Minnesota.

If you haven't noticed, this is becoming a trend. Parsons has topped 20 points in five of the last seven games.

In a February in which the Mavericks went 4-6, he averaged 18.8 points, five rebounds and 2.7 assists.

And he's on this offensive role in smooth fashion. Parsons isn't forcing things. He isn't gumming up the offense with a lot of individual plays.

"I definitely think I'm playing the best I ever have," Parsons said. "I've obviously worked very hard to get to this point, but you have to keep it going. You can't just have a game here or there. The goal now is to keep consistently playing at this level. And as a team, we have to continue to win games. It's not about me individually, it's about our team."

Parsons winces every time he thinks back to when he was playing just 12 or 14 minutes per game early in the season, couldn't play on back-to-back nights and basically felt like he was an outsider on the team.

He was warned by everybody -- doctors, his agent, coach Rick Carlisle, owner Mark Cuban -- that coming back from his knee surgery was going to be a serious pain.

"Obviously at the time, I didn't want to believe them," Parsons said. "I'm struggling and missing shots and playing four minutes, coming out four minutes. I felt like I was messing up the team's rhythm.

"It was just a mess and something that was very hard to go through. But I'm glad because all the pain, all the struggle, all the work, I use that every time I step on the floor and realize no one's worked as hard as me to get here."

Parsons helped set a great tone with 10 first-quarter points as the Mavericks built a 20-point lead and were never really threatened. When Minnesota chopped the lead to seven in the second quarter, the Mavericks fended off that push and then stomped on the gas in the third quarter.

It was the Mavericks' largest margin of victory this season and only the fourth time they've won a game by more than 13 points.

And in case you were wondering, the Mavericks were plus-31 when Parsons was on the court against the Wolves.

Clearly he was not putting up empty numbers. They had plenty of clout behind them.

"Games like this are hard to come by," Parsons said. "We haven't had many of them this season."

As Parsons said, the key now to the Mavericks' success, as well as his own, is to get some consistency. They have shown in the last game and a half that they can be aggressors and out-effort opponents.

They clearly carried over the momentum gained in the Friday overtime win over Denver into the early portions of Sunday's game. The 6-10 Parsons often has the luxury of a shorter defender on him early in games, and he and the Mavericks now clearly have the confidence to exploit that.

"He's been shooting the 3 extremely well, and nine times out of 10, he's got the mismatch on the floor," Devin Harris said.

Said Carlisle: "He's come a long way. And I don't think we're completely out of the woods yet, but he's right there. Now it comes down to the ability to sustain."

Twitter: @ESefko

Parsons on the rise

A look at Chandler Parsons' productivity by month: