The Dallas Mavericks were without Luka Doncic in their Friday night battle against the Memphis Grizzlies, so naturally, the onus to lead the offense fell to the capable hands of Kyrie Irving. Irving, however, proceeded to have his worst game of the season to this point, scoring just 10 points on 3-15 shooting from the field as the Mavs failed to get into any sort of consistent offensive rhythm en route to a 108-94 loss.

The Grizzlies don't exactly have an elite perimeter defender on their active roster to hold Irving in check; Irving is also a player that, when his shot is falling, is hard to stop, so there's also an element of misfortune in his struggles on the night. Nevertheless, Mavs head coach Jason Kidd shielded Irving away from any blame for his putrid Friday night performance by admitting that he failed to come up with a counter to the Grizzlies' strategy to faceguard the star guard, throwing multiple bodies at him throughout the course of the game.

“He probably got a little frustrated with getting face-guarded, and we have to do a better job of getting him the ball and knowing how to play when something like that is happening. I'll take the blame for that because we didn't put him in a good position to be successful,” Kidd said in his postgame presser, per Grant Afseth of DallasBasketball.com.

In addition to missing the services of Luka Doncic, the Mavs were also without Tim Hardaway Jr., so the Grizzlies had more freedom to clog Kyrie Irving's airspace. The Mavs didn't exactly have other players to carve the Grizzlies up like Irving, with Jaden Hardy's jumpshot not falling and Seth Curry's minutes being limited due to his lack of defensive impact.

Perhaps the struggle to adjust to such tight coverage is a result of the Mavs' overreliance on Doncic to create so much space for his teammates, including Irving. But whatever the case may be, do not expect these struggles to last for long, especially when the Mavs have a top-five offense in the league and Irving is one of the best scorers the league has ever seen.