A teardrop that scraped the heavens meant more tears for the Mavericks Wednesday night.
Atlanta’s Trae Young drove to the basket and lofted a floater high over the arms of Christian Wood that nestled into the basket with 41.1 seconds to go, putting the Hawks on their way to a 130-122 win over the Mavericks at American Airlines Center.
Coming home and the return of two of their best defensive players couldn’t change the disturbing trend regarding the Mavericks’ defense, which again let them down in a big way as the Hawks could not be stopped down the stretch.
With the Hawks up 121-120, they got a three-pointer by Dejounte Murray before Spencer Dinwiddie rattled out a three-pointer. Then came Young’s drive. Murray finished with 30 points, the same as Luka Dončić.
The Mavericks weren’t completely dead. Dončić missed a three-pointer, but Dorian Finney-Smith, who was back after missing 14 games with a groin injury, followed it with a one-handed putback jam.
But with 24.5 seconds showing, Young made a pair of free throws.
We’ve seen the Mavericks come back before in the waning seconds, but it wasn’t meant to be this time.
In his quick postgame discussion, coach Jason Kidd could not have been more direct about the problems that are afflicting the Mavericks.
“If it’s with this personnel, you got to keep asking or demanding for those guys to play defense,” Kidd said. “It’s not just the offensive end. Tonight, give up 130, a team shot 57 percent. It’s a shootaround.
“In this league, if you do that, no matter if you have Luka or Kareem or LeBron, you’re going to lose. It doesn’t matter how many points you score. you’re always going to be short. So until we put a better effort into playing defense and understanding what we have to do, then we’re going to score 120, but we’re going to give up 130 or 140. One night, we might give up 150. But we’ll be fine because we scored, so it won’t look too bad.”
The Mavericks now have lost three in a row and six of their last eight. They were coming off a 1-4 trip on which Portland had scored 276 points in the final two games of that journey.
This game wasn’t quite that bad. But after giving up 40 points in the first quarter, the tone was set. The Mavericks gave up 65 points in each half.
“He’s right,” Luka said of Kidd’s assessment. “Our offense is fine. We scored 122. They scored 130. We’re good enough. We just got to make sure we put the same effort on defense.”
A game that had been tight throughout came down to the Mavericks needing a late rally. Atlanta eased ahead 121-113 with under four minutes to go.
But the Mavericks got it back within 121-120 before the Hawks sealed the deal. And it was Young’s floater that was the backbreaker.
“That was a tough shot,” Dončić said. “But a player like Trae always can make it. But if they take those shots every possession, that would be good defense. But that’s not what they were doing. There are some things we got to work on.”
For virtually the entire game, it required eye strain to find a lick of defense being employed on either side.
“You got to play defense,” Kidd said. “And right now, we’re not playing any defense.”
Not that the game wasn’t physical. Players were hitting the deck left and right, including Dončić, who spent time grabbing his lower left leg, left wrist/hand/elbow and various other body parts during the course of the game. Christian Wood got hacked on the hand and got it taped up to finish the game.
Luka said of his aches and pains: “It’s a lot. It’s a physical game. I think the refs are letting more and more contact go. But that’s all part of the game. The wrist is fine. I just got to learn how to fall. I always fall on my elbows. It’s not good.”
Wood finished with 22 points and Dinwiddie chipped in 20. But the Mavericks were teetering all night.
It was the first game back for Josh Green as well as Finney-Smith and both had good flashes. But even with those energy-giving and defensive-minded players, the Mavericks struggled to stop anybody in an Atlanta jersey.
“I think a lot of it is communication,” Green said. “We know the potential we have on the defensive end. It’s just a matter of locking in and doing it because when we play defense at a high level, it’s very hard to score against us and very hard to beat us. That’s our main (thing) going forward. It’s defense. We just got to work on it.”
Twitter: @ESefko
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