MILWAUKEE – Even here, 850 miles away on a cold, damp night in the Brew City, one could practically hear the howls from Mavericks fans back in Dallas.
Christian Wood started the third quarter. Wood and Luka Doncic led a 21-13 run to pull defensively challenged Dallas to within one point of East power Milwaukee in Fiserv Arena.
“What took so long?”
Ultimately the rally fizzled. The Mavericks, within four points in the closing 30 seconds of the third quarter, allowed a 15-1 run that catapulted the Bucks to a 124-115 victory. That brief one-point deficit was as close as Dallas got on a night when it never led and allowed 55.8% shooting.
It was Dallas’ fourth straight loss and its fifth defeat in the last six games. This 0-3 trip dropped the Mavericks, like cement, to 1-7 on the road and 9-10 for the season, rivalling last season’s sluggish start when they began 16-18.
The losing streak is Dallas’ longest since it dropped seven straight in March of 2019, toward the end of Doncic’s 33-49 rookie season.
“We’ve just got to keep going,” Doncic said. “There’s 82 games. We’ve just got to keep going.
“Every day is a new day. Every game is a new game.”
So why did Kidd decide to start Wood in the second half, with Dallas trailing 73-62?
“It was a shootout, so I decided that we needed some scoring out there and to go with Wood to score,” he said. “And we did. We scored 34 there. We gave up 31.
“So if we’re going to offensively be aggressive, and that’s the group? We did that. We just didn’t get enough stops there in that third.”
Was Kidd generally happy with the result of the new lineup?
“No, we lost. If we’re into CYO and just everybody gets minutes and shots, everybody’s happy.”
What did Doncic think of the lineup?
“It’s a good lineup,” he said. “I don’t know exactly who was in it, but Christian’s a great player.”
This game naturally was billed as a matchup of MVP candidates: NBA leading scorer Doncic and Bucks two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Doncic finished with 27 points and 12 assists and Antetokounmpo had 30 points and 12 rebounds, but sharp-shooter Grayson Allen somewhat crashed the MVP party by pouring in 25 points for the 14-5 Bucks.
Allen scored 22 of his points in the first half, when he was 7-of-7 on 3-pointers and the Mavericks seemed oddly unable to locate him.
“We gave him a lot of open looks,” Kidd said. “And he knocked them all down.”
Kidd said before the game that during the Mavericks road woes, the defense has played well enough to keep them in games, but that shooting and other factors largely had let Dallas down.
But on this night, allas came to the arena without its D.
The Bucks’ 41 first-quarter points were a season high for a Mavericks’ opponent, and Milwaukee’s 73 first-half points tied a Dallas opponent season high. Which explains how the Mavericks shot 58% for the first half, yet trailed by 11.
Doncic played a season-high 42:43 in Saturday night’s loss in Toronto, but Kidd said there was no thought given to resting Doncic against the Bucks.
Instead, Kidd decided to give Reggie Bullock his first night off of the season. Bullock is only playing 28 minutes per game, so fatigue likely wasn’t the main factor, but rather the fact he is shooting 30% from the field and 28% on 3-pointers.
Kidd and Bullock had noted in recent weeks that he is a historically slow starter, with his percentage usually rising as the season progresses. Resting him on Sunday seemed akin to sitting a baseball player who is in a hitting slump. Kidd said it would be a chance for Bullock to see the game “through a different lens.
“He’s doing everything we’ve asked,” Kidd said. “He’s getting great looks. We’ve talked about the way he started last year for us. There’s no panic. Everyone’s still wants him to shoot those shots. And we all believe the next one’s going in. It’s just the life of a shooter.
“And that’s not just for Reggie. That’s for all our shooters. We’re not shooting the ball straight.”
Tim Hardaway Jr. similarly has struggled, shooting 31.4% from the field and 29.2% on 3-pointers, but Kidd elected to give Hardaway his first start rather than start Wood and shift Dorian Finney-Smith to small forward.
If Kidd hoped the start would help cure Hardaway’s shooting doldrums, it didn’t have the desired effect: He shot 2-of-8 in 21 minutes, including 2-of-6 on 3-pointers.
At the start of the fourth quarter, with Dallas trailing 93-86, Kidd went with the same group that started the third quarter, except that he inserted Maxi Kleber for Hardaway. Doncic, Wood and Spencer Dinwiddie opened the quarter with 3-point misses and the Bucks took over the game.
“I thought that was the right thing to do,” Kidd said of that group. “We just didn’t get into a rhythm offensively and the game got away from us.”
Again. The Mavericks are finding creative ways to lose.
