The road ahead in Dallas continues to darken. 

The Dallas Mavericks lost 109-117 against the Charlotte Hornets in the 2022-2023 NBA regular season held at the Dallas American Airlines Center on the 25th (Korean time). 

On this day, Dallas started with Luca Doncic, who was temporarily out of power due to a thigh injury, and Kyrie Irving, who had pain on the toe side, starting 16 days after the confrontation with New Orleans on the 9th, and even after a long one-two punch, they failed to win. couldn’t 

Charlotte, who had to face Dallas on an away trip without a rest day because it was the second back-to-back schedule, was not at 100% power as Lamelo Ball, who was out for the season due to an ankle injury, Terry Rozier (foot) and Kelly Oubre Jr. (shoulder) were absent. Considering that, it was a rather shocking result.

At the start of the first quarter, Doncic scored the team’s first point, leading 2-0, the only lead Dallas had that day. At one point in the 4th quarter스포츠토토, they even caught up with one point, but later allowed a 10-0 scoring run and regained the lead, suffering humiliation close to a wire-to-wire defeat to Charlotte, 14th in the East, one of the weakest teams in the league this season. 

Dallas, who fell into a three-game losing streak with the loss that day, fell to 11th place in the Western Conference with a record of 36 wins and 38 losses. Of course, Dallas’ opportunity is not gone at all as the fierce ranking battle continues with only two games against 6th place Golden State, but Dallas’ future is the darkest in terms of the recent team atmosphere.

After the All-Star break, the Lakers are steadily increasing their win rate without LeBron, Minnesota, where Karl-Anthony Towns has returned from injury, New Orleans, who recently won three games in a row and successfully bounced back, and Oklahoma City, which has become an ambush in the West centered on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. A situation where there is no good team.

However, Dallas has only 7 wins and 12 losses since joining Irving despite passing Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith and the draft pick package to Brooklyn to bring in Irving, who played as the team’s main players this season for the challenge for the presidential championship. 

The synergy between Doncic and Irving is actually not as overwhelming as expected. When Doncic and Irving scored more than 40 points at the same time in the match against Philadelphia on the 3rd, the synergy between the two players came out properly, but such strong performances have yet to come out. In the 10 games that Doncic and Irving played together, Dallas received a record of 3 wins and 7 losses. can’t be satisfied

In the process of recruiting Irving, the departure of Finney-Smith, who was one of the key players in the team’s defense, was also a big negative for Dallas. Dallas, which has leveraged wing resources like Reggie Bullock and Josh Green but still struggles to fill Finney-Smith’s void, has remained 26th in the league in team defensive rating (118.5) since the Irving trade. 

A bigger problem is that after the game, Dallas has to digest five consecutive games in the East, including Charlotte-Indiana-Philadelphia-Miami-Atlanta. Dallas’ away win rate this season is only 38.8% (14-22), and it is quite a burdensome schedule as it has been sluggish against Eastern Conference teams with a 9-15 record this season. 

Dallas may not even make the play-in tournament with Doncic and Irving if they can’t turn things around on an East Coast road trip.