DALLAS — Dallas is now .500 on the season after another loss with Luka Doncic sidelined, and on a postgame edition of the Locked On Mavericks podcast, hosts Nick Angstadt and Isaac Harris discussed who deserves the blame for losing a winnable game.
Between head coach Jason Kidd, star scorer Kyrie Irving, and role players like Christian Wood and Jaden Hardy, the disappointing second half was a team effort.
“I watched this fourth quarter saying fourth quarters are normally Kyrie time,” Harris said on the show. “But when was the last time Kyrie has had to really carry a team without having a star with him?
“He’s used to Luka doing his stuff in the first quarter so (Kyrie) can save himself … it felt like he was tired in the fourth quarter.”
Irving was scoreless in the fourth quarter and shot just 2-11 from the field in the second half overall after landing awkwardly on Grizzlies forward Dillon Brooks and tweaking his bothersome right foot.
Still, the Mavs’ lack of offensive creativity did not help, either.
“I start with Jason Kidd for sure, because this team doesn’t run an offense,” Angstadt said. “So when you get down to these moments … I didn’t like the shots they got, because it felt like a lot of them were rushed at the end fo the shot clock, it felt like they were forced up.
“It’s just ‘what can one guy do?’”
To make matters worse, Kidd chose once again to not call timeouts while Memphis made its run, instead choosing to let the players feel it out and weather the storm themselves.
“At some point, you’ve got to stop the bleeding a little bit, but he obviously doesn’t like to take them,” Harris said. He wants to let them go through it, learn, and it’s hard to say that cost them the win.”