Mavericks shoved around at home by fired-up Pistons

With an excellent chance to get some more positive vibes under their belts, the Dallas Mavericks suddenly blew a tire at the wrong time.

Leading Detroit by 12 points late in the third quarter Wednesday night, the Mavs couldn’t locate the basket and promptly dropped a 95-85 decision to the Pistons at American Airlines Center.

The Mavs fell to 6-19 and and still have the worst record in the Western Conference.

The Mavs led the Pistons 64-52 with 3:20 remaining in the third quarter. From there, the Mavs went stone cold and were outscored 27-5 as Detroit zoomed ahead 79-69 with 5:10 left in the game following a tip-in by Aaron Baynes.

“We had a lot of small slippage that added up very quickly,” coach Rick Carlisle said. “We had a couple of goal-tends that we needed to lay off of.

“There were some minor mistakes, and in a game like this, which is a low possession game, they added quickly with a team that is a very capable 3-point shooting team. So we paid a price.”

A grand price.

It was an extremely disappointing performance by the Mavs, who got pushed around by the aggressive Pistons and lost the rebounding battle by a whopping 50-30. At one point in the third quarter Detroit center Andrew Drummond had more rebounds than the entire Dallas squad.

Drummond collected 10 of his game-high 17 rebounds less than eight minutes into the game. He outrebounded the Mavs 12-6 in the first quarter.

The Mavs were stuck to the floor so many times that they grabbed just one rebound in the second quarter and had only nine boards at the half.

“When it came down to it in the fourth [quarter] we struggled to hit shots and our rebounding really wasn’t there all night,” Carlisle said. “We turned them over a lot in the first half, but we only had nine rebounds in the first half, which is the lowest number I’ve ever seen.”

Despite their mishaps on the boards, the Mavs could have escaped with a victory. But they kept tossing up one brick after another late in the second half and it wound up costing them.

A 3-pointer by Dorian Finney-Smith and a dunk from Dwight Powell got the Mavs within 79-74, and three free throws from Deron Williams moved Dallas to within 81-77. But Baynes had a tip-in, and Reggie Jackson buried a pair of free throws as Detroit built its lead to 88-79 with 2:31 left.

“We’ve got to figure out a way to have a little more juice going into the fourth quarter,” Carlisle said. “And so we’ve got to keep going.

“I was real pleased with the majority of the game.”

Harrison Barnes led the Mavs with 19 points and Williams tallied 16. But the Mavs didn’t get much scoring from anyone else, and also lost center Salah Mejri in the second half to a right ankle injury.

The loss of Mejri cut into an already depleted Mavs roster. Center Andrew Bogut has missed the last four games with a knee injury.

“I hope it’s nothing bad,” Mejri said. “We don’t need another injured center.

“We had an X-ray and it didn’t show anything bad. We’ll see tomorrow how it is, and hope to be good by tomorrow.”

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 11:09 PM with the headline "Mavericks shoved around at home by fired-up Pistons."