Mavericks Embarrassed by Crippled Pacers

First, how tough is Embarrassing to spell correctly?

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Or as Charles Barkley would say, emburrasing.

"“There’s no way around it — this is an embarrassing loss.”"

"“A horrible loss. Horrific. Awful…I can’t find any more words.”"

This after Dallas fell to the Indiana Pacers, missing all five starters from their previous season’s squad, 111-110 at home. Falling to 10-5 and obtaining their first losing streak of the season after coming up short to another shorthanded team in Houston on Saturday night in ugly fashion.

Photo Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Paul George, well you know what happened.

David West (anke) and George Hill (bruised knee) haven’t played this season.

Extremely awkward Roy Hibbert sprained an extremely awkward ankle Saturday in a blowout loss to Phoenix.

Lance Stephenson is healthy (his body at least) and left for Charlotte this past summer.

C.J. Watson, Rodney Stuckey and C.J. Miles are all nursing injuries of their own. The latter two played, Watson did not…and that leads us to third string point guard Donald Sloan.

Donald Sloan, Chris Copeland, Damjan Rudez, Damjan frikkin Rudez, 2011 Mavericks champion Ian Mahinmi but in particular Luis Scola‘s “defense” against Dirk stifled the Mavs league-leading offense.

Sloan, the former Texas A&M Aggie (boo) was met with sporadic cheers for being a local boy (Seagoville High School in Dallas) in the Visit Mexico visiting team starting lineups. Or maybe because he’s the only one in the 6-8 Pacers’ starting lineup that people knew. The fourth year pro, who has already played for Atlanta, New Orleans, Cleveland and Indy was making his 26th career start. Injuries have enabled Sloan for an expanded role (32.6 mpg) and he’s taken advantage, guiding a seriously crippled Indiana squad to a respectable start in 2014-15.

Because it’s the Mavericks though, he went off, dropping 29 points, just shy of his career high of 31 which he recently established against the Wizards on November 5th.

And because it’s the Mavericks, 28-year old rookie Damjan frikkin Rudez went for 11, tying his career high (2-3 from 3). But he, along with Chris Copeland –who I’m still not sure why didn’t have an expanded role for the contending but very offensively challenged Pacers last year– (3 of 4) and even offensively limited Rodney Stuckey (2-3) had a 28-foot falling away dagger with 57 seconds left to seal the deal.

Indiana as a team shot a scorching 13-26 from downtown. My calculator tells me that’s 50%. “Ballin with Bryan” Gutierrez tweets the statistic we’re all thinking about early on in this Dallas Mavericks season.

Monta Ellis shedded his two arm sleeves as well as his power wrist bands in the third quarter, but after hitting a jumper upon his re-entry into Monday night’s game, it was back to a really troubling night for Have it All. He had five turnovers but probably had at least five more lost posessions. It was a bad night for Monta for sure. Forcing shots reminiscent of the times he played all by himself in Golden State or Milwaukee.

He’s not alone here. He has help. He has Dirk.

The help –Chandler Parsons in particular– needs to start being, well, more helpful. And the Mavericks best player and future Hall of Famer and the league’s 9th all-time leading scorer was neglected far too often in the second half, fourth quarter and especially crunch time. Whenver Indiana went cold as they’re prone to do (this was their first game scoring 100 points this season), it didn’t matter.

The Mavericks couldn’t muster up that punch to ignite the crowd and weren’t closing out on open shooters. The Pacers manhandled the Dallas Mavericks without four starters and their backup point guard.

Photo Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Losses always hurt, but winnable games for a team that shows flashes of dominance but also shows you some really troubling signs on defense hurt even worse, because as tough as the Western Conference is, all 82 games take on extra importance.

"“These kind of games, the last two games, you can’t really stomach these. It’s not a good thing.”"

–Tyson Chandler

At least the team’s leaders are aware, and it’s too early to panic, and if you’re even panicing that’s pretty stupid. Stop panicking, stupid. And Go Mavs.

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