Mavs' Inconsistent Play Continues in Clippers Loss: 3 Things Dallas Must Improve

Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving didn't get much offensive help, and the Dallas Mavericks lost their fourth game in six tries on Saturday night against the Los Angeles Clippers.

The Dallas Mavericks got off to a 4-0 record to start this season, but they've been a .500 basketball team since, as they're now 10-6 following a deflating 107-88 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night.

The Mavs got good production from their star duo of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, who scored 30 and 26 points respectively, but nobody else, aside from Tim Hardaway Jr. scoring 12 points on 5-14 shooting off the bench, decided to pitch in much on the offensive end. Dallas ended up shooting 37.4 percent from the field – topping Wednesday's season-worst 39.6 percent in a win over the Los Angeles Lakers – and 23.7 percent from deep.

Dallas will never be a true title contender if they keep playing as inconsistent as they have, and here are three of the biggest things it must change going forward to take that next step.

The Mavs are already far too reliant on 19-year-old big man Dereck Lively, and they need to make a trade to upgrade their center depth to address this issue. Dallas fell to 0-2 when Lively doesn't play, and the team was out-muscled and out-rebounded 57-37 against the Clippers. The Mavs already don't have a great defense, but even when they do get stops, it's deflating to give up second-chance opportunities after doing so. The Clippers grabbed 17 offensive boards on Saturday.

It's great that Lively has been as good as he has been so early in his career, but it's not fair for the Mavs to put as much of a burden on him as they have so far. GM Nico Harrison needs to be working the phones, looking for a way to give Doncic and Irving more defensively-sound big men to work with, not just when Lively is out, but also just to back him up when he is playing.

Luka Doncic shoots over the outstretched arm of Kawhi Leonard / Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

The Derrick Jones experiment has been fun, but the Mavs still need a true starting small forward to have more consistency going forward. In 20 minutes as a starter against the Clippers, Jones finished with four points on 1-5 shooting and was by far a team-worst -26 on the night. After putting up 20 points in a win over the lowly Washington Wizards on Nov. 15, Jones has averaged 4.0 points while shooting 25.0 percent from the field in the four games since. Not surprisingly, the Mavs are 1-3 in those games.

The dream for the Mavs would be to somehow pull off a trade for Toronto Raptors 3-and-D forward O.G. Anunoby, but it has yet to be seen if GM Masai Ujiri is ready to hit the reset button on his team that is 8-8 in the early stages of the season. A more realistic path to improving both the wing position and backup center depth might be to attempt to poach Alex Caruso and Andre Drummond from the sinking Chicago Bulls.

Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan are stars, but they don't make much sense for the Mavs from a price tag and defensive standpoint. Obviously, there are other routes Harrison can take to improve the Mavs' roster, but eyes should be kept on Chicago over the next month or so at the very least.

Whatever the Mavs are doing during while having multiple days off in the same city, they probably need to stop doing it. We saw it a few weeks ago in the Big Easy, as Doncic and company looked completely out of sync and slow in a blowout loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, just 48 hours removed from blowing them out in the first matchup. 

Now, after coming off a win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday – one where they led by 20 in the fourth quarter before ultimately scraping by, 104-101 – the Mavs put up yet another stinker despite the Clippers playing on the second night of back-to-back and their third game in four nights.

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What's the deal here? Are guys going out partying more than they should be during these multiple-day layoffs because they're bored and have too much time on their hands? Was it just a case of eating too much Thanksgiving food in L.A. over the last two days when it comes to the Clippers loss specifically? Whatever the case may be, head coach Jason Kidd must find a way to have his guys better prepared in these situations. The good news is that the Mavs won't have another road mini-series in the same city until late March, when they'll spend four days in Sacramento.

The Mavs now have another two days off, as they return to Dallas for a three-game homestand, their longest of the season so far. They'll take on Dillon Brooks and the Houston Rockets for the first time this season on Tuesday at American Airlines Center. It will technically be an In-Season Tournament game, but the Mavs have already been mathematically eliminated, so it will just be business as usual for Doncic and company.

After playing six of their last seven games on the road, we'll see if some home cooking is what the doctor ordered to get the Mavs out of their current funk.