Mavs’ sleepy loss to Clippers raises more questions about cast surrounding Doncic, Irving

LOS ANGELES — One of these teams played 24 hours earlier. The other had two days of mostly rest, mixed with Thanksgiving, practice and Santa Monica beach time.

So of course the rested team, Dallas, looked sluggish in arguably its worst and unquestionably most perplexing performance of the season, a 107-88 defeat to the Clippers in Crypto.com Arena.

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“The physicality of the Clippers was high,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said. “Ours was low. I think we were (late) responding to that, and that put us in a hole.”

Perhaps it was turkey, dressing and beach hangover. Or perhaps Saturday’s particularly poor start was residual from what occurred in the fourth quarter in this arena three nights earlier against the Lakers.

The Mavericks beat the Lakers despite shooting 3-for-19 while blowing a 20-point fourth-quarter lead, but in Saturday’s first quarter they were almost as cold (7-for-25) and never recovered, despite a Kyrie Irving-led rally that brought them within 83-70 with 10 minutes left in the game.

Dallas thus ended its difficult season start of having to play 10 of their first 16 games on the road with a 10-6 record: Probably at least two victories better than most projected, but unsatisfying in that they didn’t pounce on a tired Clippers team they whipped by 18 in Dallas two weeks ago.

Luka Doncic scored 30 points, but shot 12-of-27 in a performance that seemingly was affected by a left hand injury that he sustained in the opening minutes when James Harden clamped down with both hands in a steal attempt.

Irving scored 26 and Tim Hardaway Jr. scored 12, but no other Mavericks rotation player scored more than five points. Dallas played without starting center Dereck Lively, who bruised his lower back on a hard fall against the Lakers.

Against the Clippers, centers Richaun Holmes and Dwight Powell combined for 2 points and 7 rebounds in 36 combined minutes.

“It was a tough game, so you’ve got to give them credit for doing that on the defensive end and staying physical with us,” Irving said. And then offensively, we just got a little stagnant. They kept us out on the perimeter pretty often, so just look at where we can get better from that and just develop more chemistry - as we see more defenses like that.”

Said Kidd: “When you look at the stat sheet, Timmy, LD and Kai, those were the guys who pretty much carried us. We’ve got to get other guys involved. They’ve got to knock down shots.”

The drought by Mavericks other than Doncic and Irving was a continuation of the Lakers game. Starting with a Josh Green field goal with 59 seconds left in the third quarter of the Lakers game, Dallas players other than Doncic and Irving shot 0-for-23 during a span of 19:53.

That particular drought finally ended on a Hardaway jump shot with 5:05 left in Saturday’s second quarter. That only pulled Dallas within 46-32. Yes, it was that kind of night.

Even Doncic, who typically is a one-man wrecker of the Clippers, wasn’t himself. Entering Saturday, he had scored 42 or more points 28 times in his regular season and playoff career, with ten of those coming against the Clippers.

It was Dallas’ second-most lopsided loss of the season, and perhaps there’s a common thread in the Mavericks’ two worst defeats. The other, a 21-point defeat in New Orleans, came 48 hours after Dallas pummeled pummeled the Pelicans in the same building.

“Maybe we’ve been in New Orleans too long,” Kidd quipped that night. The same perhaps can be said about Santa Monica, the Mavericks’ home base since Tuesday.

“It’s time to get back to the drawing board,” Irving said. “We’ve had a new nice days in L.A., but it’s time to get back home.”

Before the game, Clippers coach Tyronn Lue seemed all but resigned to another big Doncic performance.

“Man, he kills us every time we play him,” Lue said. “So we just try a lot of different things to try to keep him off-balance. He’s a great player. We try to blitz him; he picks you apart, you try to fire; he picks you apart, one-on-one. We try to just mix it up on them and just try to keep him off-balance, but for some reason he loves playing against us.

“So we’ve got to try and change that narrative a little bit.”

They did, and in the process raised perplexing questions for Dallas.

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