Mavericks already claimed horrendous title two weeks into the season

After Wednesday night's loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, the Dallas Mavericks fell to 2-6 on the season, officially claiming the title as the worst team in the Western Conference. Dallas and New Orleans are now tied as the bottom team in the West at 2-6, and the first two weeks of the season have gone worse than any fan imagined.

Most fans thought that Dallas would be a play-in team by the time the end of the season rolled around, as Kyrie Irving likely won't return until 2026, and they'd have to play plenty of catch-up, but no one thought it would be this bad.

No one expected Dallas to be the worst offense in the NBA, and Nico Harrison's extreme focus on defense has already come back to bite him.

Mavericks' nightmare start has officially reached new lows

The Mavericks' defense has been fine through eight games, as P.J. Washington, Max Christie, and Cooper Flagg have all been excellent on that end of the floor, but their defensive core has been in and out of the lineup. Dallas is built on a double-big strategy headlined by Daniel Gafford, Dereck Lively II, and Anthony Davis, but they have yet to play a game with all three of them in the lineup. Their massive identity has been nowhere to be found, and we haven't even gotten a look at how scary they can be when they're all healthy.

Gafford missed all of the preseason and the first five games of the season with an ankle sprain, Davis has been out since the end of last month with a calf strain, and Lively II is dealing with a knee sprain; their three-headed monster hasn't even gotten to flex its muscle yet. This was supposed to be their bread and butter, as they wanted to beat teams with their size and physicality, but their strategy to bully other teams in the paint hasn't worked out.

Dallas' heavy investment in their frontcourt resulted in some deficiencies in the backcourt, and they're suffering badly for it. Their on-ball creation is nonexistent for the most part outside of Brandon Williams, and while the offense runs much more smoothly when D'Angelo Russell is on the floor, his shooting has been poor.

Russell is shooting 36 percent from the field and 31.1 percent from beyond the arc, and even though his playmaking has been strong in spurts, the Mavericks clearly should've signed a more dynamic guard to lead their offense. Dallas knew that Irving was going to miss extended time during the summer, but they decided to take the risky approach of re-signing Dante Exum, signing Russell, and not trading for a more high-level guard.

They did not properly manage their assets during the offseason, and they're paying for it now.

Even with Flagg joining the mix, he isn't enough to carry the load, and he, Washington, and Christie have been some of the only bright spots on the roster.

The Mavericks have a lot of work to do if they want to return to being one of the top teams in the Western Conference, and for now, they'll have to deal with all of the criticism that comes their way until they snap out of this funk. It's an absolute embarrassment that Dallas is the 15th-ranked team in their conference and a bottom-five team in the NBA, and something drastic needs to change if they'd like to fulfill Harrison's vision of winning a title over the next few years.