The Dallas Mavericks got off to a slow start and eventually lost 114-113 to the Phoenix Suns on Friday night. This brings Dallas to just 5-4 on the season and 10th in the Western Conference.
Phoenix opened the game with an explosive first quarter, and the Mavericks trailed 36-26 after the first 12 minutes of action, a trend that has become common throughout the first portion of this season.
Phoenix led the Mavericks by 13 points at halftime, but a good start to the second half kept Dallas alive for the entirety of the second half.
Suns center Jusuf Nurkic made a clutch free throw with just 0.8 seconds remaining in the game to seal the win, as Mavericks guard Luka Doncic missed a last-second shot to win at the buzzer.
Dallas has struggled to find a rhythm in the early parts of games to begin the 2024-25 season. The Mavericks are tied for 23rd in the league with a scoring average of just 26.3 points in the first quarter.
Kidd addressed these issues after the loss to Phoenix and said the team has “talked about this slow start and the energy” needed to begin a game well.
“We’re trying to learn who we are, and it’s early in the season. Maybe we’re a sleepy team that just kind of wakes,” he said, per The Mavericks.
“Again, the energy is something that we can hold them accountable for. The one thing you can control is your effort and energy, and right now our energy is low and we got to be better with that. So, it’s something that we got to talk about as a group, and the beauty of this is we get a chance to fix it on Sunday.”
Another issue the Mavericks are dealing with is the lack of scoring from players off the bench. Dallas has collected just 25.1 points per game from players off the bench through the first nine games of the season.
Kidd said after the loss that the Mavericks’ “bench stinks right now,” and he can’t force Doncic and Irving to play too much because the team has long-term goals that cannot be jeopardized.
“It’s a team. It’s not just Luka and Kai and Klay (Thompson). Others have to participate, and that’s not happening right now. I played the whole (expletive delete) team tonight, and we couldn’t find anybody. So, we had to leave those two to carry the load, and that’s unfair for those two this early in the season,” explained Kidd, accordion to The Mavericks.
Dallas is now just 5-4 on the season and is currently 10th in the Western Conference playoff standings, which would make them the final play-in team in the postseason.
The good news for Dallas is that these losses have still come early in the season when many teams across the league have started slowly. Dallas trails the Minnesota Timberwolves by just one game for the fourth seed in the conference.
As Kidd mentioned during his postgame press conference, the Mavericks will have a chance to bounce back from the slow start against the Denver Nuggets on Sunday at 7 p.m.
