Dismal road record holding Dallas Mavericks back from playoffs

The Dallas Mavericks are not the same team on the road as they are at home. Here’s a look at how their road woes have contributed to them not having a better record.

The Dallas Mavericks have topped the 40-win mark just once in the past three seasons. Aside from having a top-5 pick in last year’s NBA Draft, there weren’t a lot of expectations for this ball club coming into the 2018-19 campaign.

Following a woeful 3-7 start, the Mavericks have played close to .500 since, and they are 21-26 on the season. But that’s not the only good news.

Another silver lining is the play of rookie forward Luka Doncic, who the team acquired via a draft-night trade with the Atlanta Hawks. In comparison with the rest of the rookie class, Doncic leads the field in scoring with 19.9 points per contest.

He is third in rebounds with 6.8 per contest and second in assists with 7.2 dimes per outing. While there is room for improvement in terms of his overall shooting numbers (42.8 percent), Doncic is knocking down 35.6 of his looks from beyond the arc, thus showing he can be a threat from long range.

As good as Doncic has been, there is one thing that is preventing this team from being in playoff contention. The element in question has to do with the fact that the Mavericks are a completely different team on the road than they are at home.

For starters, Dallas has won 17 of its 23 home games. On flip side of the narrative, the Mavs have dropped 20 of their 24 road games. At the friendly confines of American Airlines Center, the Mavericks are averaging 111.6 points per contest. On the road, that average drops to 107.4 points per game.

At home, the Mavs are converting a respectable 46.2 percent of their overall attempts, including a 35.4 percent clip from 3-point range. On the road, however, they are shooting 43.6 percent from the field and 33.6 percent from downtown.

Not only are the Mavs a different team from an offensive standpoint, their defensive numbers take a bit of a hit as well. In their 23 home games, the Mavericks have a +5.9 point differential. Conversely, they have been outscored by an average margin of 5.7 points per contest on the road.

Still need more proof?

On their home floor, the Mavs’ opponents are shooting 44.7 percent from the field and just 32.8 percent from the land of 3. When the Mavericks travel on the road, though, their opponents are shooting 47 percent from the floor and 36.3 percent from beyond the arc.

Are you starting to notice a theme here?

As good as Doncic has been so far, he hasn’t been immune to this peculiar home-road split, either. In 22 home games, Doncic is averaging 21.0 points per game on 45.6 percent shooting. In 24 road games, those numbers dip to 18.7 points per outing on 40.2 shooting from the field.

As the numbers suggest, the Mavs don’t play as well on the road as they do in front of their home crowd, which has prevented them from making a serious run in the conference playoff race. That’s the bad news.

From a positive standpoint, though, Dallas is just 4.5 games back out of the eighth spot and there is still a significant amount of games left in the season.

Bearing that in mind, if the Mavs can find a way to improve their level of play on the road, perhaps nabbing the 8-seed isn’t out of the realm of possibility.