Ellis injures knee in Mavericks’ lopsided loss to Spurs
In a game marred by defeat and a knee injury to Monta Ellis, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban may have earned his first fine of the season from the NBA.
Cuban was livid after Ellis left Friday night’s game against the San Antonio Spurs for good midway through the third quarter. Ellis was apparently was kicked in the right knee.
Without their leading scorer, the Mavs lost to the Spurs 94-76 before a crowd of 18,581 at AT&T Center.
The loss dropped the Mavs to 45-28 on the season as they remained in seventh place in the Western Conference standings. Dallas is 1 1/2 games behind the sixth place Spurs (46-26).
When Ellis departed with 6:43 left in the third period, the Mavs had rallied from a 21-point deficit and was within 58-54. After Ellis went out, the Mavs were a shell of themselves as they finished the game shooting 37.8 percent from the field and were outscored 25-15 in the fourth quarter.
“He was kicked or kneed in the right calf and it’s very sore, but we don’t know the extend of it,” coach Rick Carlisle said of Ellis. “We’ll see how he feels in the morning and we’ll go from there.”
Cuban took to social media to voice his displeasure of several calls he believes haven’t gone Ellis’ way this season. He also told the assembled media after Friday’s game that it’s imperative that the league does something to protect the Mavs’ leading scorer.
“We literally have a playlist of all the calls of Monta getting smacked and there’s no call,” Cuban said. “It’s crazy, and it’s always the same — oh, its incidental, it’s not this or it’s not that.
“I don’t even expect the league to change anything. I’m hoping fans —every time something like happens — fans to post the video so that everybody sees it.”
Asked if he anticipates his first fine of the season from the NBA for making comments critical of the officiating, Cuban said, “I don’t care one way or the other.
“It’s just some of the most ridiculous feedback we get. You turn it in and it’s like oh, that’s incidental. Oh, he got hit in the face — it’s incidental.”
After Ellis’ departure, the Mavs’ offense floundered. The Spurs, meanwhile, shifted into another gear and proceeded to pounce all over the Mavs.
“We were just stagnant all night,” said Chandler Parsons, who scored nine points on 4-of-11 shooting. “We actually played hard in the second half and gave ourselves a chance to win the game in the second half, but that wasn’t our problem.
“Our problem was getting down so big in the first half.”
The Mavs were down at one point in the first half 52-31 before closing to within 54-41 at intermission. That forced them to exert a lot of energy to try to get back in the game.
“We just didn’t compete,” Parsons said. “They got every loose ball again, and we had some bad turnovers. Just an ugly game overall.”
Tyson Chandler (10 points, 14 rebounds) and Ellis (10 points) were the only Mavs players to hit the double digits in points. Dirk Nowitzki was 3-of-9 from the field with seven points, and Rajon Rondo had seven points on 3 of 10 shots.
“It was a very physical game, and good shots and baskets were hard to come by, really both ways,” Carlisle said. “We held them to 94, which is a good defensive game for us, but we couldn’t throw it in the ocean, which made it tough.”
The win helped the Spurs avenge Tuesday’s 101-94 loss to the Mavs in Dallas. But now, the Mavs went to bed not knowing if Ellis will be available to play in Sunday’s game in Indiana.
“I thought the third quarter we bounced back and really battled and we got it to four,” Carlisle said. “And then we had three of four empty possessions in a row and we just weren’t able to recover after that, which was disappointing.”
Dwain Price, 817-390-7760
Twitter: @dwainprice
This story was originally published March 27, 2015 at 11:24 PM with the headline "Ellis injures knee in Mavericks’ lopsided loss to Spurs."