DALLAS -- Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle is concerned about the way his team has not protected the basketball thus far in preseason.
The Mavs have turned the ball over a whopping 96 times in five games, for an average of 19.2 turnovers per game. Carlisle knows those types of mistakes will lead to more losses than victories.
Dallas had 19 turnovers during last Saturday's 110-94 loss to the Atlanta Hawks. A dozen of those came in the first half and led to 20 points for the Hawks.
It also led to Carlisle taking his team into the film room this morning to try and analyze the problem.
"We've got to do better with the ball,'' Carlisle said after this morning's shootaround at American Airlines Center. "We’ve got to eliminate turnovers.''
From Carlisle's perspective, the good thing is that the majority of the turnovers are self-imposed and are easily fixable.
"Those things are correctable,'' Carlisle said. "We looked at all of them on film today.
"It really wasn’t anything that Atlanta was doing. It was just we made some poor decisions and didn’t make good reads, so those are all things that are correctable so we’ve got to correct
them.''
Shawn Marion leads the Mavs with 13 turnovers, while OJ Mayo, Darren Collison and Delonte West each have 12.
-- Dwain Price
Follow me on Twitter
@dwainprice
Comments