Game 60: DAL (31-29) vs. DEN (41-18) | 109-118 Loss

[SleepingHero]

Hard to win games with no defense at all.

First, Luka is obviously still hurt. He is laboring out there. He's grimacing with every move. I have no idea why the team is letting him play through an injury. Despite his injury and lack of ability to move, he can still put up a near 40 point game on good efficiency. That's just because he's Luka.

The bad:

He has decided to stop play defense. He just doesn't care nor can he move well enough to keep up. He's a massive hole right now.

The team is playing so uninspired with him on the court. I've never seen anything like that before with a Luka led team. The ball seems to be stuck in molasses. No one but Luka seems to be able to score when he's the lone guy out there. Everyone is hesitating, or overpassing to the point where they just seem disconnected from the play. 

It carries over to defense, with lackluster effort. It's easy to blame this on Luka, and I am not fully absolving him here, but this falls squarely on the coach. I don't understand what Kidd is trying to do. This team looks so out of practice and out of shape. It's the small shit that's killing this team. Simple stuff. No one boxes out. No one seems to know where to rotate consistently on defense. Players are forgetting plays on the offensive end. The spacing is all out of whack.

That stuff is basketball 101, and for a former HOF player, Kidd should be better at this. It's quite disgusting. 

I don't really know where the Mavs go from here if they put forth this kind of Jekyll-Hyde performances. The team was badly hampered tonight. It's obvious we have to rely on THJ badly now that DFS is gone. Before we could weather the storm if THJ was out because DFS was good enough to cover it. Now with no DFS we're relying on Theo Pinson and G-leaguers. Massive difference there. 

So while I want to admonish the team, they all seemed to be huffing air and almost half the roster had some sort of ailment. I really really really really hope they use this all-star break productively. Get healthy and get fucking polished. Absolutely embarrassing performances from them.