The Dallas Mavericks dropped a disappointing home game to an undermanned Philadelphia 76ers squad, 120-116 in Dallas on Sunday.

Without reigning MVP Joel Embiid, the 76ers have been a bit aimless, puttering around .500 and dropping further down the Eastern Conference standings. After a difficult four-game road trip, the Mavericks came back home with a chance to get right against an inferior opponent and instead laid one of their biggest eggs of the season.

It started well enough, with Dallas blitzing Philadelphia for a quick 11-0 lead in the games opening minutes. It looked like the Mavericks would cruise after that, but the 76ers went on an 11-2 run to get the game back under control and from that moment the Mavericks were in trouble.

Tyrese Maxey got Philadelphia off to a good start with 19 first-half points as the Mavericks offense looked lifeless. Luka Doncic scored two points in the first quarter on 1-of-6 shooting and needed a hot shooting second quarter to close a Philadelphia lead to five at halftime, 56-51.

The third quarter might have been one of Dallas’ worst, considering the stakes of the game and the opponent — the 76ers outscored the Mavericks 34-25, building a double-digit lead, and they did it without Maxey scoring. Tobias Harris and Kelly Oubre did the damage off the dribble, scoring well isolated against the Mavericks’ smaller wing players. That trend continued to start the fourth, and Philadelphia built an 18-point lead early in the final quarter.

It looked like the game was over, but since this is the modern NBA, it technically wasn’t. Dallas finally decided to start playing with some force, picking up the 76ers full-court, and running hard on offense. Dallas cut the lead to five at 110-105 with under a minute left, but a Harris corner three ended up being the dagger. Kyrie Irving made some desperation threes in the final seconds to make the game look closer on the scoreboard, but the Mavericks never had the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead in the final quarter. Dallas drops a game they absolutely could not.

Here’s what we noticed.

This was a coaching loss

Myself and this site haven’t talked too much about the performance of Mavericks coach Jason Kidd, because it feels a bit like beating your head against a brick wall — his job has never seemed in question, and criticism of the coach seems to bring out the worst from some fans and Mavericks media.

Today it’s unavoidable — Kidd was terrible. The Mavericks opened the game playing drop coverage in the pick-and-roll against 76ers All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey (meaning the big man guarding the pick-and-roll drops into the paint, allowing time for the perimeter defender to get around the screen and entice the ball handler into inefficient midrange shots), despite the Mavericks previous matchup against the 76ers before the All-Star break, where the Mavericks limited the 76ers to 102 points and Maxey to 15 points on 6-of-16 shooting by blitzing Maxey in the pick and roll, trapping and doubling him to give the ball up and force other members of the Sixers to beat them.

The strategy on that Feb. 5 game made a lot of sense — without Embiid, the Sixers don’t have a ton of offensive creators, so why let Maxey beat you? Harris is a decent enough scorer, and the addition of Buddy Hield and the return of Nicholas Batum makes a difference, but still, for the most part, Philadelphia doesn’t have a lot of guys that can burn you out of a double team.

So instead of returning to that strategy, the Mavericks dropped their bigs back to wall off the rim, and instead Maxey used it as a free runway into the paint, scoring on a variety of pullups, teardrops, floaters, and layups. Maxey had 19 points in the first half. It was bad.

Then the Mavericks changed in the second half, mixing up traps and switches against Maxey. Lo and behold, Maxey only scored five points in the second half and the Mavericks were able to whittle the lead down in the fourth quarter. It wasn’t flawless, of course — Dallas got smoked by Harris and Oubre in isolation on weakside kickouts, but it was better than whatever they were doing in the first half. The Sixers shot less than 50 percent from the field, and 29.7 percent from three overall, and the Mavericks could have pounced on the early 11-0 start if they just did what they did that worked last time.

Instead, Kidd and the coaching staff played a coverage that not only won’t work on a player like Maxey, it usually doesn’t work against most quality teams across the NBA. Drop coverage is becoming the way of the dinosaur in the modern NBA, and it looked particularly gruesome with backup center Daniel Gafford executing it. A baffling decision by the Mavericks coaching staff.

The Mavericks offense is too top heavy

Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving both finished with good numbers — Doncic with 38 points on 14-of-27 shooting, Irving with 28 points on 10-of-20 shooting — but once again the Mavericks’ offense fell off a cliff whenever someone other than those two players shot the ball.

Mavericks not named Doncic or Irving shot a ghastly 7-of-32 from three (21.9 percent) and that includes Derrick Jones Jr. wild 5-of-5 from three day. Jones scored 23 points in his previous eight games, averaged five points per game in the month of February, and he scored 21 points against Philadelphia. Even with that random explosion, the Mavericks offense was still rudderless for most of the game. If Jones didn’t have a random, fluky night, the Mavericks would have looked even worse.

PJ Washington scored 13 points on 3-of-10 shooting. Tim Hardaway Jr. scored two points on 1-of-8 shooting. Maxi Kleber scored on two free throws, missing his only two shots. Teams are starting to let Irving and Doncic play 1-on-1 more and living with the Mavericks role players going up against single coverage and more stable closeouts, because why would you give such limited players easy open threes off double teams when they’ve proven that’s typically the only way they can score? It feels like teams are deliberately living with Doncic and Irving’s big scoring outputs, not fearful the supporting cast can make up the difference against a set defense.

This is supposed to be where guys like Washington and Hardaway chip in, but it’s been a massive struggle for both, especially Hardaway. There aren’t too many options to turn to on the bench besides Jaden Hardy, so the Mavericks need to adapt to the way teams are defending them. This is where having a coaching staff that draws up some plays would help. Which, seeing how good the Mavericks are on after timeout plays, makes this all the more confounding. Teams are more than happy watching Doncic and Irving hold the ball and attack — the team needs to drum up some movement outside of when defenders decide to blitz or double, or the Mavericks offense will continue to look weird.