By MIKE PIELLUCCI
FOXSportsSouthwest.com
Jan. 17, 2011
The good news for the Mavericks?
Dirk Nowitzki looks to be back to his best.
The bad news?
Just about everything else.
Despite Nowitzki's best efforts, the Dallas Mavericks were outplayed badly in their Martin Luther King Jr. Day matinee with the Pistons, losing 103-89 on Monday at the Palace of Auburn Hills in Detroit.
First, the good, which begins and ends with Nowitzki's first full game back in action after he was ejected from his initial game back from injury Saturday at Memphis. Any remaining fears about the MVP candidate's sprained right knee can be put to rest after his blistering 32-point performance on 10-for-17 shooting to go with five rebounds and five assists.
The whole arsenal was on display, too: the long-range bomb (4 for 7 from 3-point range); drawing fouls inside and getting to the free-throw line (a perfect 8 for 8); the midrange jumper; and even his trademark one-legged fadeaway.
Throughout the brutal nine-game stretch Dallas endured with Nowitzki on the sidelines, he and coach Rick Carlisle constantly reiterated that the star forward would only set foot on the court once he was 100 percent healthy. He proved his health on Monday, allowing Dallas to set aside the greatest of its rapidly growing list of concerns.
As one problem is resolved, however, another crops up for the hapless Mavs, who have lost six in a row for the first time since 2000.
Even as the team languished without Nowitzki, the lingering hope was that the star forward would save them as he has done so many times before. That line of thinking now must be thrown out the window after Nowitzki gave the Pistons his best shot, only for his teammates -- Jason Terry excepted -- to show the same mediocrity they've displayed for the past three weeks.
"In these situations, you never get out of it because it's time to get out of it," Carlisle said in his postgame news conference. "You must fight out of it, and we've got to fight out of it. That's the beginning and end of it.
"We didn't have enough fight to get over the hump or anywhere near the hump, and that's disappointing."
Indeed, Dallas spent the first half treading water before drowning in the second in a storm of sloppiness and lethargy. The Mavs allowed the Pistons to shoot 65 percent in the second half en route to a whopping 62 points.
Too many of those points came on uncontested put-backs and backdoor dunks, pointing less toward an inability to stop Detroit's typically punchless offense, which ranks 25th in the league in points scored and 21st in field-goal percentage, and more toward a disinterest in doing so.
"We caved," Carlisle said flatly. "Our competitive level has got to come up. It's as simple as that. What happened in the second half is not acceptable."
It's tempting to cast an eye at Tyson Chandler's absence and wonder just how many of those easy baskets he could have prevented. Unquestionably, having the team's defensive anchor back in action after his illness will help both on the floor and in the locker room, but as Carlisle asserted and Nowitzki demonstrated, simply plugging a piece back into the lineup won't pull Dallas out of its funk.
Chandler can't fix careless ball-handling (16 turnovers, resulting in 22 Detroit points) nor can he do much to solve the screaming need for another scoring option after Nowitzki and Terry combined for 50 of the Mavericks' 89 points.
He can't repair Jason Kidd's broken jumper (0 for 7 on 3-pointers Monday; 8 for 37 from behind the arc in his past seven games), nor can he teach Shawn Marion to put some arc on the crude turnaround floater that contributed to a 2-for-8 day from the field.
Those problems go beyond players -- even ones as crucial as Nowitzki and Chandler -- being out of the lineup, and instead point to deeper issues of roster construction.
The party line is that the Mavericks will continue to assess all their options before making a trade, and that's certainly their prerogative as they haven't fielded their complete roster since Nowitzki was injured on Dec. 27.
At the same time, however, they can -- and must -- play with a greater sense of urgency to avoid sliding further down the Western Conference standings.
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