Mavs Go Cold in 109-103 Loss to Celtics
DALLAS - When your offense is on an all-time record pace, it is bound to regress to the mean at some point.
Players get tired or injured, shots stop dropping, and things just stop going your way.
That is exactly what happened to the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night, as their league-best offensive attack hit a cold streak in their 109-103 loss to the Celtics at the American Airlines Center.
"We did some good things for the most part," coach Rick Carlisle said. "Most of the game, our turnovers were low. We had a few problems in the second half. Hey, it was a tough night; the opening shots we did have, we were struggling to get them in. It was tough stopping them.”
More importantly, basketball isn't rocket science.
Luka Doncic (who was moving around on the floor before tipoff and will travel with the Mavs this weekend) is simply vital to the Mavs' success. When he is sidelined, as he is right now with his ankle injury, their margin for error is very slim.
Turnovers and bad possessions are no longer an inconvenience. Instead, their negative impact is magnified to a much larger degree.
Open shots also become more difficult to come by, the creativity is missing, and the threat of Doncic doing something special with the basketball is no longer there to draw defenders away and create better opportunities.
The Mavericks showed on Monday night (in their stunning win at Milwaukee) that they are capable of overcoming that deficiency at times, but on Wednesday, the exact opposite was true.
As a team, the Mavs had one of their worst shooting performances of the entire season, hitting 39.1-percent from the field and 34-percent from beyond the arc.
To the Celtics credit, their defense made things difficult on the Mavericks throughout the game. That said, Dallas missed a lot of open shots, and without Luka, this team just doesn't have enough to overcome a poor shooting night.
Kristaps Porzingis and Seth Curry did their best to keep the Mavs in the game, with the Unicorn nabbing his 10th double-double of the season with a 23-point, 13-rebound, three-block performance, while Curry added 20 points on 8-of-13 shooting for the evening.
"(Curry) has played well," said Carlisle. "He’s really played well all year. He’s played well when Luka was playing. His game against Milwaukee was great; he did a lot of good things tonight. Look, we need everybody. That’s really the calling card of this team, is the depth. We just gotta have guys keep stepping up."
The rest of the roster proceeded to shoot 29 percent, and against a Kemba Walker onslaught of 32 points, supplemented by 26 from Jaylen Brown, the Celtics just had too much for the Mavs to handle.
The Mavericks (18-9) will now hit the road to face the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday night, before wrapping up their quick two-game road trip against the Toronto Raptors in a Sunday matinee performance.
"Now we have two more every tough games before Christmas,'' said Maxi Kleber. "But we can’t be afraid. We just got to go out there, play our game, move the ball more, be quicker with ball movement, make better decisions, make some shots and then hope our defense gets stops.”
