MILWAUKEE – We’ve all probably had lousy trips.
That long holiday weekend at the in-laws comes to mind.
But they don’t come a whole lot worse than what the Mavericks suffered through over the last five days.
They put a lid on an 0-3 trip against the best the Eastern Conference has to offer and found a different way to lose each game.
On Sunday, they had a terrific offensive night for three quarters, but couldn’t stop Milwaukee often enough, limping home to Dallas with a 124-115 loss to finish their journey.
It started with falling into a huge hole in Boston and never recovering. Then on Saturday in Toronto, they lost a nice lead and couldn’t pull out a win against a depleted Raptors team.
On Sunday, their defense betrayed them. Big time, as the Mavericks slipped below .500 at 9-10. Overall, their losing streak has grown to four games.
And, by the way, the Bucks showed exactly why they are a serious championship contender, improving to 14-5. They got 30 points from Giannis Antetokounmpo and 25 from Grayson Allen, who hit his first seven three-pointers. The Mavericks just couldn’t keep pace.
The Mavericks now have fallen to 1-7 on the road. And while going 0-3 on this trip is bad, it came against stout competition. It is compounded, said Spencer Dinwiddie, by what the Mavericks have done before this.
“Obviously, nobody wants to be in that situation, and beyond the four straight games, our road record is pretty poor,” Dinwiddie said. “This is why we can’t drop the winnable ones, the 20-point leads or Denver without their players or the Rockets – then you start to look at games like this in a vacuum. Oh no, we lost to the Bucks.
“But it’s the Bucks on the second night of a back-to-back. If you’d have looked at the schedule at the start of the season and said you’re going to lose this game, everybody’d be like: eh.
“But we’re under .500 now . . . it’s a broken record, but it’s the ones you drop to the Rockets or Denver without their players. Those are the ones you got to have.”
True. If the Mavericks had taken care of business against the softer portion of the schedule, this stretch wouldn’t sting so much.
But that’s just not the case. It does sting.
““It’s 82 games,” said Luka Dončić. “We got to keep going and we got to keep trusting each other. Every day is a new day and every game is a new game.”
Dončić led the Mavericks with 27 points, but it was a rugged night against a physical Milwaukee defense. Dinwiddie added 22 points and Christian Wood, who started the second half, but not the first, had 21 points.
“It was a shootout,” coach Jason Kidd said. “Both teams. They came out first. We withstood that run. We gave up 73 in the first half. We gave up 70 to Boston. Normally those are blowouts, but we were right there. We just couldn’t get enough stops in the third quarter.
And the fourth quarter never rally never materialized.
“We just couldn’t get into a rhythm offensively (in the fourth quarter) and that’s when the game got away from us,” Kidd said.
They couldn’t stifle the Bucks from the three-point line and while the Mavericks had the sort of shooting night they’ve been looking for all season, when they missed a trio of three-pointers to start the fourth quarter, they fell behind 117-98.
It continues to confound the Mavericks and their fans as to why they can’t seem to put together some consistency at both ends of the court. They fell to 1-7 on the road.
“We played a lot of close games,” coach Jason Kidd said before the game. “We’re not making open shots. Our defense is giving us an opportunity on most of these nights to win.
“If you don’t make threes in this league, you’re not going to win a lot of games. We’re generating a lot of wide-open shots. For whatever reason right now, they’re not going in.”
They certainly were on Sunday. The Mavericks tossed in 11 three-pointers in the first half – and still trailed by 11 points because of their casual approach on the defensive end.
But they had chances even without putting up much resistance. After stumbling badly out of the gate and trailing 18-5, they trailed throughout the first half and the problem was not on the offensive end.
Unlike many games early in this season, the Mavericks were sizzling from three-point range. They hit 11-of-21 in the first half and it was an impressive shooting display, for sure.
The defense was another story. The Bucks got whatever they wanted, including three pointers. Grayson Allen hit all seven of the ones he tried in the first half, most of them with no Maverick in the vicinity.
The Bucks finished the first half with 73 points, tying the most the Mavericks have given up in a half this season. The 41 they surrendered in the first quarter was the most an important has had in a quarter.
Allen accounted for 22 first-half points, including his seven three-pointers.
“He was on fire,” Kidd said. “We gave him a lot of great looks and he knocked them down. They moved the ball really well in the first quarter. We just couldn’t get to their shooters.”
The Mavericks trimmed a 73-62 halftime deficit to 86-85 and their was hope that the finale of this trip would be a happy ending. But the Mavericks never took the lead. The Bucks scored the next 10 points and never looked back.
Twitter: @ESefko
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