Mavs With Another 'Extreme' Embarrassing Home Showing in Blowout Loss to Phoenix

DALLAS - The Dallas Mavericks are an enigma.

On the one hand, they are an excellent road team. On the other, they cannot seem to find a way to consistently win within the friendly confines of their own arena.

Over the last 24 hours, it has been more of the same, with Dallas coming off of an impressive road win over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night, only to follow it up with an embarrassing 133-104 blowout loss to the Phoenix Suns at the American Airlines Center on Tuesday.

“It was certainly a very poor performance by us," Rick Carlisle said. "Giving up 32 [in the first quarter], and then giving up 28, then 48, and then finally giving up 25 [in the final frame] ... Defensively we didn’t have the disposition we needed – obviously – and offensively, we struggled. All in all, it was a very disappointing, ugly night.''

It isn't an aberration either, because with this loss to the Suns, five of the Mavs now 12 home losses have come to teams with at least five games below .500, including the Knicks, Kings, Blazers, and Hornets.

It makes little to no sense on paper, regardless, it is a very real problem that this team is facing that could be very problematic down the road.

“I mean, yeah," Luka Doncic said about the home struggles. "But you know, we’re still in the playoff position and nobody thought we were going to be in a playoff position. Obviously, we can do better. We have so much more to learn and we’re going to learn.”

Forever. 🙏#RIPMamba pic.twitter.com/qjgPcAfLRr
— Dallas Mavericks (@dallasmavs) January 29, 2020

In this case, in particular, things were rocky from the opening tip, with a pregame tribute to the late Kobe Bryant and the eight others who perished in Sunday's helicopter crash being followed Phoenix taking a quick 4-0 lead, and Carlisle calling a quick timeout.

From there, DeAndre Ayton and Devin Booker each put on a clinic, as the Mavs had one of their worst defensive showings in quite some time, giving up a franchise-worst 48 points in the third quarter alone.

Ayton, who was just about unstoppable, had a hyper-efficient scoring night, scoring 31 points and grabbing nine rebounds while hitting 13-of-15 shots from the floor.

Booker meanwhile continued his torrid January stretch, pouring in 32 points on 12-of-20 shooting, and handing out nine assists to go along with nine rebounds in just 31 minutes.

Booker has been one of the top scorers in the NBA since Christmas and has averaged 31.6 points per contest in the month of January.

Doncic led the way in scoring for Dallas, scoring 21 points, while J.J. Barea and Jalen Brunson added 15 each off the bench.

Dallas shot 44 percent from the floor and just 21.2 percent from three as a team, turning the ball over 15 times.

The Mavs (29-18 and 13-12 at home) will attempt to get back on track this Friday night when they travel to Houston to take on the Rockets.

It will be the second matchup of the season between the two teams, with Dallas winning 137-123 at the American Airlines Center on November 24th.

“These nights do happen in the NBA," Carlisle said. "I just don’t think you write off something like this quite that easily. This team has done so many things to get people excited about it. They have really worked hard to get into a solid position at this point in time. A performance like this is just tough, and nights like this do happen, but this was extreme.”