Mavericks are foolishly ignoring their genius Klay Thompson plan

The Dallas Mavericks were outdueled by the Boston Celtics once again on Saturday evening, as Dallas’ lineup proved to not be dynamic enough to match the high-octane offense of the Celtics. The Celtics had the game in their hands from the third quarter onwards, as they hit 20 3-pointers en route to a 122-107 victory over the Mavericks.

Without Luka Doncic and Dereck Lively II, it was hard to imagine the Mavericks being able to hang with a fully healthy Celtics team for 48 minutes, especially since Dallas was coming off their most impressive win of the season versus the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday night.

Even though Dallas wasn’t expected to win this game, they came out of this contest more depleted than they originally bargained for, as veteran big man Maxi Kleber suffered a fractured right foot in the game.

Kleber was viewed as one of their main assets for a prospective trade, but this injury could severely derail Dallas’ plans. The Mavericks signed Kylor Kelley to a two-way deal on Sunday, and now he and Daniel Gafford are currently the only non-injured bigs on Dallas' roster.

Mavericks haven't gotten Thompson involved enough offensively

Signing Kelley could be a temporary solution to stop some of Dallas’ bleeding in the injury department, but the Mavericks need to find a way to create more offense until Luka Doncic gets back, and involving Klay Thompson in more offensive actions could be at the forefront of potential solutions to that issue.

Thompson had missed two games in a row due to injury before Dallas’ game against the Celtics, but his return to action marked one of his most underwhelming performances of this season, as he shot the least amount of field goal attempts that he’s shot in a game throughout this entire season with four attempts in the game.

Back in the offseason, Mavs assistant coach Jared Dudley said that Dallas would find creative ways to get Thompson involved in the offense. While we saw flashes of that with Doncic still in the lineup during December, the Mavericks have been reluctant to feature Thompson in more offensive actions where he’s not being strictly used as a stand-still catch-and-shoot shooter.

In the month of January, Thompson has only attempted more than 15 field goals in two contests, and this is with Doncic missing the entire month. Thompson may not be the go-to three-level scorer and dynamic movement shooter that he was in Golden State, but he can still free himself off-ball very well through actions being run for him, and the Mavericks certainly could’ve used his scoring more throughout this Doncic-less stretch.

Thompson has only shot 39.6 percent on field goals this month, but this is partially due to Dallas not running more plays for him to get easier looks, and Thompson has been hard-pressed to find his rhythm late in games when he hasn’t been able to get going early on.

This could be an overreaction if Thompson truly can’t thrive in Dallas’ offense without the spacing provided by Doncic, and Thompson ends up playing much better offensively when Doncic returns from injury. However, the Mavericks paid Josh Green for Thompson over the offseason in hopes of Thompson’s shooting ability taking this Mavericks offense to new heights, and that hasn’t been the case so far this season for whatever reason.