Mavs Have ‘Great Film Session’ After Sixers Loss; Luka, Kyrie Ready to Lead:Since their loss to the Sixers on Sunday, the Mavs have lost four of their last five games. Dallas hopes to get back on track with Monday’s practice.
NEW ORLEANS — After beating the Philadelphia 76ers 120–116, the Dallas Mavericks have now lost four of their last five games. This comes after they won seven straight games. The Western Conference standings race is very close, but the Mavericks are still hopeful that they can get back on track.
The Mavs need to fix a lot of things because they are currently going downhill. For starters, they are placed 30th in defensive efficiency while having problems scoring, especially when it comes to keeping the ball and making shots when they are open.
- “When you take a look at the group, you can see that they are in a pleasant mental state. Jason Kidd, the coach of the Mavericks, stated after Monday’s practice that it is not simple to win in this organization.
- Also, it is important to have a basic awareness of the things that need to be cleaned up. In addition to defensively, with an offensive focus.
- We are currently ranked fifth offensively since the All-Star break. Then, defensively, we are ranked thirty-first. There is room for us to make improvements.
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Mavs Have ‘Great Film Session’ After Sixers Loss; Luka, Kyrie Ready to Lead
- The Mavs had a “really good” film session on Monday to help everyone talk to each other better and fix some of the problems that have made their defense the worst in the NBA since the All-Star break.
- “We watched film—had a great film session,” Kidd said after practice on Monday. “Just being able to talk about different situations that we saw last night, and then also on different defensive possessions on this last road trip.”
- Kidd went on, “It was a really good film session.” “Hopefully, the communication’s better tomorrow.”
- With players like P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford still getting used to the Mavs after being traded at the trade deadline and players coming back from injuries, the team has a lot to figure out when it comes to jobs and responsibilities.
- Kyrie Irving stressed how important it was for everyone to become more like a great team.
“We’re trying to speed up time right now to get a good sense of what roles are, who’s playing, and who’s not,” Irving said after the loss on Sunday. “I may have said this a few days ago, but the real sign of a great team is how well everyone fits in with their job.” Because you want to be out there, you don’t let your feelings get in the way.
- As Kidd talked about how the team is currently working on building a rhythm with a healthy group while they try out different combos, he made a similar point.
- According to Gafford and Washington, they are still getting used to the team’s plans. No matter what, Kidd told the group that they needed to refocus on conversation.
- “With being healthy, you’ve got to go through a rhythm and understand we’ve got guys coming back,” said Kidd. “We’re still trying to win, so we’re looking at different plans.”
- We now have two new guys. The plans are meant to help them get used to them. Some things are going to break down, and we need to keep working through that.
- “The only thing we want our group to do is talk.” Kidd went on, “We can’t take our phones outside and text each other.” “While we play, we can’t look at Twitter or Instagram.”
- To help each other, we need to be able to talk to each other. It was very low this afternoon. We need to improve how we talk to each other and be able to take advice in a constructive way.
- Irving admitted that he needs to improve in some of the “little incremental moments” that add up to make the difference in games. To do this, Irving stressed the value of talking to each other, just like Kidd did.
“There are so many little incremental moments in the game when we all could be better,” he said. “That starts with me, and then down the line, we just have to have that fluidity of communication and understand that we’re not out of any game.”
After their loss to the Sixers on Sunday, Luka Doncic stressed how important it is to have more energy at the start of games. He thinks that because he is the head of the team, his members will do what he does, whether it is good or bad.
“I mean, it’s tough. It’s tough to lose games. “In the NBA, you have another game in a day or two, so give it your all,” Doncic said.
“I think it’s a little bit of both, but just, like, the energy just has to be from the first second [or] minute of the game,” Doncic said. “I’m sure I could do better.” That’s my fault. People do what I do, so I need to do better too.
- Through the Mavs’ season and Kidd’s time as coach, one theme that has been clear is the need to recover when bad defensive play is caused by poor offense.
- Kidd was happy with how hard his team tried to come back against the Sixers in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game, but he made it clear that some parts of their defensive plan weren’t being used until then.
- “You look at being desperate and know that you can’t make a mistake.” Kidd said, “I thought the guys played very well in the fourth quarter.”
- A lot of our plans didn’t get put into action until the fourth, but when they did, they worked out the way we thought they would.
- “I’ve already said this about offense: our offense is our defense.” Kidd said, “When we score, we’re one of the best teams in this league.”
- “We’re one of the worst teams when we don’t score.” When we’re having trouble scoring, we don’t do much on defense while we try to find a way to score.
- They look good at us, but they’re not interested in us. In the fourth, we scored 40 points, and our defense was one of the best it has ever been.
When talking about how the Mavs’ defense can get better, Kidd said that the other team has been making a lot of shots, but the team needs to get better at making timely defensive changes, especially in the corners.
“Looking at the last five minutes of the game yesterday, being able to execute the defensive schemes at a high level,” said Kidd. There’s only one thing left to do: be steady for 48 minutes. That’s what many teams are trying to do right now. I think it’s a mix of things.
Guys taking easy shots, but also our defense. We need to do better. We’re giving up too many open threes in the corner, which is something we’ve always been proud of. Our rotations are a little behind schedule right now.
A problem the Mavs need to fix is the unusually high change rate they’ve been seeing. The Sixers scored 14 points off of Dallas’s mistakes in the first half, which gave them chances to speed up the game and attack on the break. Dallas usually does a great job of keeping turnovers low, but when performance goes wrong, there isn’t much room for error.
“We did turn the ball over a lot. “That’s not going to help us win when we have an equal number of assists and turnovers,” Kidd said. “We need to do better.” Our team doesn’t drop the ball. We’ve been having some changes here lately. We had a lot of mistakes this afternoon. Your defense will be under a lot of stress if you’re not getting shots. When it comes to the ball, we need to get better. We’ll get better on Tuesday when we play Indiana.
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