DALLAS _ Nobody would have blamed the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday if they walked off the American Airlines Center court at halftime, made a bee line for the team bus and bolted to the airport for a flight home.
An eventual 122-73 loss to the lowly Dallas Mavericks was clearly over after two quarters, and the Lakers were playing some of their ugliest basketball of an unsightly season, with most of their shots clanging off the rim, several missing the rim entirely and too many passes missing the mark.
Was there really any need to subject themselves and the fans to another 24 minutes of this?
NBA rules stipulate that four quarters be played, so the Lakers (16-32) had no choice but to suffer through another half of dreariness, as the Mavericks (15-29) extended their regular-season winning streak over the Lakers to 13 games dating to Nov. 5, 2013, their longest-active winning streak against any team.
The Mavericks handed the Lakers their biggest loss in franchise history, surpassing a pair of 48-point losses: a 123-75 defeat to the Utah Jazz last season and a 142-94 defeat to the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014.
It marked the fifth time in less than three years that the Lakers have lost by 40 points; the franchise had suffered only four such losses before 2013-14.
The Lakers (16-32) went six minutes without a field goal, from Jordan Clarkson's runner in the lane with 2 minutes 8 seconds left in the first quarter to Luol Deng's cutting layup with 7:32 left in the second.
The Mavericks pushed their lead from 23-22 to 40-23 during the drought, in which the Lakers missed eight straight shots, and by halftime, the Dallas lead swelled to 34 points, 67-33.
The Lakers scored only 11 points in the second quarter, their lowest-scoring period of the season, making only four of 17 shots and missing all six of their three-point attempts. They turned the ball over five times in the period.
Two days after playing what coach Luke Walton called his best game of the season, rookie Brandon Ingram, who started at point guard in place of the injured D'Angelo Russell, had one of his worst halves of the season, making one of seven shots, turning the ball over twice and committing three fouls.
Ingram air-balled his first shot, a three-point attempt, and his runner later in the first period was swatted out of bounds by Dallas center Salah Mejri. Ingram's first shot of the second quarter, a driving layup, was blocked by Dirk Nowitzki.
Walton was furious that no foul was called. "Bill, are we watching same game?" Walton yelled at referee Bill Spooner. "He tried to foul him!" A minute later, Walton used almost all of a timeout to chew out Spooner, but he was not slapped with a technical foul.
Nowitzki scored nine points in the second quarter, and Wesley Matthews scored eight. The Mavericks made six of 11 three-point shots in the quarter. Dallas surpassed the 100-point mark with 8: 45 left in the game.
Ingram also had a fourth-quarter driving shot attempt swatted away by Dwight Powell, who scored on a fast-break basket on the other end to give Dallas a 112-66 lead with 5:02 left.
