It began Saturday with an attempt with Don Nelson's promised big lineup, and with facing one of their biggest fears ? a spookily athletic Los Angeles Clippers squad.

The result, a 119-110 loss to the Clippers at the Staples Center provided some answers, too. Namely, that there is some work to do.

Because the Big Lineup wasn't exactly a success, and the athletic Clippers out-swooped and out-gunned the Mavericks in the first of Dallas' second back-to-back set on the road.

The Big Lineup experiment began with a first-quarter force-feeding of rotating the Mavericks' true centers: 7-6 Shawn Bradley, 7-1 Wang Zhizhi and 6-11 Evan Eschmeyer, who was activated from the injured list before the game. He had been out since Dec. 29 with a severely sprained ankle.