PORTLAND, Ore. -- Monta Ellis wasn't quite in a talkative mood after the most miserable offensive performance of the Dallas Mavericks' season, but he wanted to make one thing clear.
"My hip is not a factor," Ellis told ESPNDallas.com while walking briskly to the team bus after the Mavs' 94-75 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday, Dallas' lowest-scoring game during his two-season tenure with the team.
If Ellis is indeed healthy, how to explain his dramatic drop-off in production and efficiency since he strained his left hip in a Feb. 9 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers?
In the past nine games, the Mavs' scoring leader has averaged only 14.7 points on 37.2 percent shooting. Ellis was averaging 20.4 points on 45.7 percent shooting before his injury.
It's just a slump, Ellis insists, plain and simple. Just a rough patch that he needs to fight through.
"That's all it is," Ellis said after going 5-of-20 from the floor during his 12-point outing against Portland.
If Ellis doesn't get back in a groove soon, the Mavs' hopes of owning home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs are all but extinguished. That's how much the shooting guard means to the Mavs' suddenly mediocre offense.
It's no coincidence that the 40-23 Mavs have played .500 basketball since Ellis' injury, going 5-5 dating to the loss to the Clippers, when Ellis missed the final 44 minutes.
It certainly hasn't helped that center Tyson Chandler missed three games with his own hip injury and small forward Chandler Parsons has missed seven straight due to an ankle injury. Father Time winning a few rounds against Dirk Nowitzki (only 12.5 points per game since the All-Star break) is an issue, too. But the Mavs need Ellis to be the efficient scoring machine he was for the first half of the season to have any reasonable expectations of a playoff run.
The return of Parsons, which could come as soon as Sunday against the Los Angeles Lakers, should take some pressure off Ellis by putting another capable creator in the starting lineup. But the Mavs' offense, for better or worse, will still run primarily through Ellis.
At 36, Nowitzki is no longer capable of carrying an offense on a nightly basis, which is why he has gladly anointed in-his-prime Ellis as the Mavs' new go-to guy.
For whatever reason, Ellis hasn't been able to hold up his heavy end lately.
"He plays no matter what," coach Rick Carlisle said when asked about Ellis' health. "That's just how he is, and I know he has aches and pains. I've got to work harder to get him better shots. That's got to be my responsibility. He's not going to make any excuses about it, but I've got to do better to get him better shots. Simple as that."
Ellis operating the pick-and-roll has been a consistently potent weapon since he arrived in Dallas in the summer of 2013. Suddenly, however, it's sputtering.
Defenses have always dared Ellis to beat them with his midrange jumper. He made them pay in the first half of the season, managing to become a midrange shooter, something most never anticipated during his days as conscience-free gunner in Golden State and Milwaukee.
But those shots aren't falling now. According to NBA.com stat tracking, Ellis has hit only 36.3 percent of his shots from 10 to 24 feet in the past nine games, a drop of almost 5 percent from his first-half production.
More concerning, Ellis isn't getting to the basket as often or finishing as efficiently. He averaged 5.1 attempts in the restricted area before injuring his hip, making 59.8 percent of them. In the past nine games, Ellis has averaged only four attempts in the restricted area and made only 50 percent of them.
Dallas needs Ellis to be a dynamic player off the dribble. If he isn't, this half-court offense becomes boring and stagnant, especially when Parsons is wearing skinny jeans and watching from the bench.
Of course, it'd surely help Ellis if he didn't have to create so much out of half-court sets.
"We don't make it easy on ourselves when we're not running," Chandler said. "I thought in the first quarter we ran, and then it's like we took a breath and stopped doing what was working for us. We've got to do a better job of just continuing to pressure teams and allow great players like Monta to get in a rhythm that way instead of having to carry the load shooting jump shot after jump shot without getting in any kind of rhythm."
It's hard enough for Ellis to shoulder such a heavy load when he's healthy. He promises his hip isn't a problem, but with him struggling, the Mavs' offense is painful to watch.