DALLAS — After losing five of their last six games, the Dallas Mavericks face an urgent need to turn things around. The Western Conference playoff race is highly competitive, with the Mavs' recent struggles putting them at risk of sliding as far as 10th if it continues.
“I don’t know, actually. But we know we’ve got to fix it," Mavs superstar Luka Doncic said about the team's defense.
The Mavs' last outing was a disappointing 137-120 loss against the Indiana Pacers on Tuesday night. It was the second matchup between these two teams in nine days, occurring the day after Monday's "great film session" for the Mavs.
Instead of tightening up what has been the NBA's worst defense since the All-Star break, Dallas gave up 137 points to a team that scored 133 in the previous showdown. With an inability to contain dribble penetration, make timely help rotations, and consistently close possession, Dallas has sorely struggled.
“We have to be better. I think just looking at the defensive side, I thought again, 74, 70 (points), it was shootaround," Mavs coach Jason Kidd said. "And talking about (Pacers center Myles) Turner, I thought we did a good job of taking away Turner in that third quarter. I’ve said this before when we score, we’ll play both sides of the ball and that third quarter, we kind of went cold and they kept playing and that’s a credit to Indiana.
They kind of play one way and that’s with their pace and putting pressure on you, shooting the 3," Kidd explained. "We’ve got to be able to take the 3 away. We gave up way too many corner 3s, tonight. These are things that we’ve worked on. We’ve just got to be able to see it in real-time, and so, these are things that we will be continuing to work on.”
Ahead of Thursday's matchup against the Miami Heat, the Mavs will investigate making changes, whether it's to the starting unit, or lineup combinations throughout games. The team hasn't gotten stops defensively consistently, regardless of lineup style, but the coaching staff remains optimistic about the options.
"We can fix this. We’ll be ready for Thursday," Kidd said. "We’ve got a lot of games left, but the personnel, we can look at different rotations. We can look at different starting lineups. We’ve talked about that before the game. We have options, and we’ll explore those.”
Regarding the rotation size, the Mavs may reduce the number of players seeing minutes going forward. With 20 games left to play, the coaching staff is ready to "explore" different combinations to see what works.
“It’s March, we can fix it,” Kidd said. “We’re playing 10 (in the rotation). If we have to cut this thing down to seven then that’s what we’ll do. We’ve got a lot of games left. We can look at different rotations. We can look at different starting lineups. We’ve talked about that. We have options. And we’ll explore those.”
With a lot of talk about the need to improve communication and energy, the Mavs' statements about needing to improve must translate to results on the court. If these results persist, a new voice, whether regarding the coaching staff or the locker room, is surely needed with the lack of a response.
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