Lethargic Mavs Can't Stop Donovan Mitchell, Fall to Cavs in Blowout

The Dallas Mavericks fell back to .500 on the season with a loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night. Although the energy picked up for Dallas in the second half, it wasn't able to overcome a lethargic start.

Coming into Wednesday night's matchup against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Dallas Mavericks knew they were going to have their hands full, especially when considering two of their key contributors in Josh Green and Maxi Kleber were out.

Things were as tough as imagined, as the Mavs fell into a 16-2 hole a little more than four minutes into the first quarter, and they were never able to fully recover. The Cavs went on to blow out the Mavs, 105-90. Dallas fell to .500 with a 14-14 record, while Cleveland improved to 18-11.

With Green and Kleber out, the biggest concern coming into this one was defense, and for good reason. The Mavs had no answers for Cavs star Donovan Mitchell, who finished with 34 points on 13-20 shooting from the field. He scored 27 of his points in the first half alone. It was a wire-to-wire win for Cleveland, as Dallas never once had the lead.

Luka Doncic led the way for the Mavs with 30 points, five rebounds and six assists in 39 minutes. Despite the nice stat line, Doncic only shot 9-23 from the field, including 2-8 from deep. He did shoot an encouraging 10-11 from the free-throw line, though. This was just the second time Doncic has lost to the Cavs in his career. He's now 6-2 against Cleveland in eight tries.

"I think it was a little bit of both,” said Doncic when asked about whether the loss was more about the Mavs’ poor start or the Cavs’ stellar play.

“They're a really good team. They have two 7-footers in the paint which is tough to get to the paint. They have [Lamar] Stevens who is strong and big. And then on the offense, they have Darius [Garland] and [Donovan] Mitchell, they're going to do their own thing. They have a pretty big team, a great team.”

Doncic was visibly frustrated throughout the night, not only with his own sluggish play at the beginning of the game, but with the play of his team overall. When you score 33.3 percent of your team's points and still lose by 15, we'd say that's cause for from frustration. The Mavs will have to make a move or two before the trade deadline if they want to more than a .500 team the rest of this season.

dont love this!!!! pic.twitter.com/0rrcCi02Rq

— Slightly Biased (@BiasedSlightly) December 15, 2022

"We will figure out tomorrow what we're going to do about defense,” said Doncic. “We just didn't guard and then our offense was static. We missed a bunch of layups too, especially me. I have to do way better than this. And we just have to bounce back."

The Mavs shot 39.2 percent from the field as a team on Wednesday, while the Cavs shot 52.6 percent. As a professional basketball team, you won't win many contests shooting that poorly from the field. Dallas was also out-rebounded 43-33 and out-scored in the paint 52-26.

Next up, the Mavs will wrap up their three-game homestand against Damian Lillard and the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday night.

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