Watch Celtics’ second-year player Jayson Tatum talk on Boston’s 113-104 loss to the Dallas Mavericks. The loss was the 10th of the season for the Celtics, only 20 games into the season.

Despite Celtics’ young star Jayson Tatum turning in a game-high 21 points, Boston suffered their 10th loss of the season to the Mavericks, 113-104, on Saturday. Tatum’s big offensive game wasn’t enough to keep pace with the hot-shooting Mavericks. Boston fell to 10-10 on the season, while the Mavericks climbed to 9-9.

It was the fourth quarter that sealed the win for the Mavericks, as they drained timely threes’ and ran away with the victory at home. The Mavericks’ five-point lead at the start of the final quarter gradually grew to 16 after JJ Barea and Wesley Matthews both nailed three-pointers with a little over four minutes to play. The 106-90 advantage at that point was too much for the Celtics to answer.

Tatum pointed to the Celtics’ lack of communication and poor defensive effort as the main cause to their fourth loss in their last five games.

“It wasn’t about our offense, it was about our defense,” Tatum said.

The loss to the Mavericks was the anthem on how the Celtics’ season is going so far. It was the 17th times this season that Tatum and the Celtics scored 100 or more points. But, on the other hand, it was the 14th time the Celtics have given up 100 or more points to the opposing team.

With all that being said, Tatum vowed to get things right before it’s too late.

“It’s tough, but we’ll figure it out.”

With almost a quarter of the NBA season done, Boston sits in 6th place in the Eastern Conference. They are six games behind the top-seeded Raptors.