The Mavericks defense, which after two games ranks 24th in points allowed per 100 possessions, is most to blame for the team's 0-2 start, Dirk Nowitzki said Wednesday.

"It really starts defensively where we’re having problems just getting stops and then our offense looks bad, too, because we can’t play off of flow; we’ve got to take the ball out, we’ve got to play a slow-down game, and we weren’t good at that even last year," Nowitzki said. "We were at our best when we got stops, when we pushed the ball up, when we play in flow, when we move the ball and that’s hard to do if you take the ball out every time.

"So, we’ve got to work on our defense, got to get sharper, got to trust each other, work on our rotations and work on our coverages, so we’ve got a lot of work to do."