DALLAS, TX — There doesn’t appear to be any end in sight for the Dallas Mavericks’ losing streak, which after a 112-105 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday afternoon at American Airlines Center, has now reached five games.
“We are close but we are just not good enough right now,” Dallas head coach Rick Carlisle said postgame. “We have to be better and there are just a whole lot of tiny things that have to be slightly better. We are playing good teams. Indiana is a very good team; Charlotte is going to be the same kind of team.”
Speaking of Charlotte, that’s who the Mavs will face Monday on the road. And after dropping four straight on their home floor, maybe hitting the road isn’t the worst move for a Dallas team that now sits eighth in the Western Conference at 33-33, two-and-a-half games clear of the current ninth-place Utah Jazz.
Dallas is 4-6 in its past 10 games while Utah is 3-7.
As expected, Paul George led the way for the Pacers with 20 points, but 18 of those came in the second half.
In the first half, George was 1-for-6 from the field for just two points, but went 5-of-10 and 5-of-6 from the foul line to finish with an even 20.
“I knew I had to find a rhythm for myself,” George said. “It was just get the ball and go, and create offense for myself. I was trying to get other guys going. We got some good looks. I thought they were really dialed into me on the strong side, so I tried to get everything on the weak side.”
Dallas trailed 83-75 after three quarters and was still hanging around, albeit by a thread, but George Hill’s deadly accuracy from long range in the final 12 minutes, as he connected from three-point land three times to end the final frame with 10 points, was the final dagger.
“Big time, biggest reason we won, because George Hill knocked down those threes,” Pacers head coach Frank Vogel said of Hill’s fourth-quarter performance. “But it’s a credit to everybody else, everybody else’s ability to find him and to play team-first type of basketball, attack and share it. Our passing was really good in the fourth quarter. We want to reward good passing the way George did by knocking down big shots.”
The Mavericks have their first five-game losing streak since December 2012, when Dallas dropped six straight. In that skid, the Mavs lost at home to the Miami Heat, on the road to the Memphis Grizzlies, San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder and concluded the streak with a loss at home to the Denver Nuggets and another loss to the Spurs, this one in Dallas.
Dallas guard Wesley Matthews might have had the quote of the night when asked what more he and his teammates could have done to end this skid at four games.
“It’s not about X’s and O’s. It’s not about this [box score] anymore, we’re a .500 team. We deserve to be a .500 team and we’re at that crossroads,” Matthews said. “Where do we want to go, what do we want to do about it? It’s all here now.”
This game marked the first for Pacers rookie Myles Turner, who grew up in the Dallas area, as an NBA player in his hometown. Turner, a candidate for 2016 NBA Rookie of the Year honors, finished with 15 points and seven rebounds with his parents and over 90 other well-wishers in attendance.
“Yeah, it felt great [to come back],” Turner said. “We’re trying to make a serious playoff push right now, so the fact that we could come in here and take care of business, it was great.”
Another Pacers-related storyline was this being the first game for Monta Ellis, who spent the last two seasons with the Mavs, playing his first game in Dallas since signing with Indiana as a free agent.
Ellis had 17 points on 7-of-13 shooting and seven assists in 36:31 on Saturday afternoon, a solid showing by the former Maverick.
“The thing [we wanted to do] was to attack,” Ellis said. “We know they’re a paint-swarming team, and [we wanted to] make the extra pass and find guys in the corner and out on the perimeter. We did that. At the beginning of the game we missed a lot of open shots, but in that second half when we came back toward the fourth quarter, we made a lot of open shots to close the game out.”
After playing in Charlotte on Monday, Dallas then heads to Cleveland to face the Cavaliers before returning home to host the reigning NBA champion Golden State Warriors next Friday.
That last Dallas team to drop five in a row finished 41-41 and missed the playoffs, is this team headed for a similar finish? Wait and see because this ride could get even bumpier.
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