No matter how much soap they used while showering off the stench of a blowout loss to New York, the Mavericks probably missed a few spots.
After all, they missed just about everything else Wednesday night.
A miserable shooting night left the Mavericks searching for a lifeline, but there were none to be found as nothing could keep them from drowning in the sea of missed shots as they were pounded in stunning fashion by the Knicks, 107-77, at American Airlines Center.
It’s been a season of comeback wins for the Mavericks. They have 13 wins when they’ve trailed by at least 10 points.
But a 28-point deficit was asking too much.
And so, a five-game winning streak went down the drain as the Mavericks finished up a four-game home stand with a 3-1 record. They fell to 40-26 for the season, pushing them closer to sixth-place Denver than fourth-place Utah in the Western Conference seedings.
That’s what happens when you shoot 44 3-pointers and make only six (13.6 percent). They shot only 31.4 percent overall.
“It happens. That’s why you play 82 games,” coach Jason Kidd said. “We held them under (43) percent. We just couldn’t score. And it happens.
“That’s basketball. You make some. You miss some. We missed a lot of them tonight, unfortunately. We shoot 13 percent. We shot 44 threes and only made six of them.
It must be something about this Knicks’ team, which also beat the Mavericks by 23 points in New York on Jan. 12. The Mavericks have lost five consecutive times against New York at AAC.
It was New York that also ended the Mavericks’ season-best winning streak of six in a row in January. Now, this five-game run is history.
But Kidd was not prepared to reach for any panic buttons. The Mavericks still are 24-8 since New Year’s Eve.
“We had a great home stand,” he said. “Sometimes, you’re going to lose a game and tonight was the night, but we had a great home stand.
“Now we go out on the road for five and our goal is to come back over .500 (for the trip). A lot of good things on this home stand. We can’t let one game ruin that, and we’re not.”
The trip starts Friday at Houston before heading to the East Coast for four more.
The Knicks (28-38) won for the third consecutive time as they are in the midst of a seven-game road trip.
The Mavericks were particularly horrid in a first half that left the Mavericks hopelessly in the Knicks’ dust. Even so, Luka Dončić did his best with 17 of his 31 points in the third quarter as the Mavericks got as close as 74-60.
But there would be no legendary comeback this time from the team that made up a 19-point deficit in the fourth quarter last week against Sacramento.
The numbers were not pretty. The Mavericks had a season-low 10 assists and they were outrebounded 55-37.
This, in addition to the poor shooting helped them fall behind 53-25 late in the first half.
It was nothing short of a nightmare in the shooting department as they missed their first 19 3-pointers before Spencer Dinwiddie drained one from beyond the arc. For a team that came in with an 18-game streak of making at least 10 3-pointers, it was a strange development.
Equally strange was a technical foul that was called on Dončić. It was his 14th of the season. Players are suspended for a game after their 16th technical.
“It was nothing man — just can’t (have any) more. I’ll challenge this one, too,” said Dončić, who had one of his earlier technical rescinded by the league.
As for the game, Dončić said: “We won five in a row. We had one bad game. That’s it.”
Twitter: @ESefko
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