Dallas Mavericks Fall Out Of Playoff Seeding With Loss To Charlotte Hornets

If the Dallas Mavericks aren’t at rock bottom, they are not far from it. The lowly, lottery-bound and shorthanded Charlotte Hornets walked into the American Airlines Center in Dallas and pummeled the Mavericks on Friday night. They left with a 117-109 win in a must-win game for Dallas.

The loss to the Hornets sucked the air out of the room for a struggling Mavericks team. Dallas now finds itself outside the playoff picture looking in with eight regular season games remaining. The desperate reality of their situation is becoming a heavy burden to bear.

“It’s really frustrating,” Luka Doncic said. “I think you can see it with me on the court. Sometimes, I don’t feel it’s me. I’m just being out there. I used to have fun smiling on the court, but it’s been so frustrating for a lot of reasons — not just basketball.”

For his part, Doncic did what he could in the box score. He tallied 34 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists, but the effort and drive to win on both ends never fully materialized for him or his teammates. It didn’t help that their three-point shooting failed them either — Dallas was 9-36 from deep.

Doncic and the Mavericks were 16-point favorites heading into their contest with the Hornets, but Charlotte came out aggressive, looking like a team with something to prove. They bullied Dallas in the first half, building a 69-55 halftime lead.

“It was awful. Dogshit,” Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd said about his team’s effort. “I think just understanding the talk before the game of what we’re playing for — playoffs or championship — and to come out in that first half, but more-or-less that first quarter, and give up 37 [points]. The interest level just wasn’t high. It was just disappointing.”

Kidd wasn’t the only one disappointed in the team’s effort. Fans rained down boos as the Mavericks walked off the court at halftime, voicing their pent-up frustrations with a team that has only won consecutive games once since the All-Star break and has proved to be a disappointing mess for much of the season.

Even the addition of Kyrie Irving hasn’t worked out in the Mavericks’ favor. Dallas has a 3-7 record when both Irving and Doncic play. Even though he struggled shooting the ball, Irving still totaled 18 points, nine boards and seven assists.

“In terms of concerns, we have to throw all of that out before we get on the court,” Irving said. “I have been in positions before in the season when we have been under .500 and scratching and clawing to get into the playoffs. It’s not a position you want to be in, but it’s our reality, and we have to face it.”

Facing that reality isn’t easy. Dallas advanced to the Western Conference Finals a season ago and might now miss the playoffs. The loss dropped the Mavericks into eleventh in the Western Conference standings and out of the play-in tournament bracket.

If there is some cause for hope, it’s that only one game separates the seventh seed and the eleventh seed. The Mavericks also hold tiebreakers over the Los Angeles Lakers and Utah Jazz, two teams jockeying for play-in positioning.

Those tiebreakers mean nothing if the team continues to flounder and show complete disinterest in competing as it did Friday night. The players and coaches are the ones who let this season spiral out of control. Only they can turn things around, but time is running out.

“We’ve got to fight hard and play hard, and that’s about it,” Doncic said. “We’ve got to show we care, and that starts with me first. We’ve got to believe this team can be better and play harder.”