DALLAS -- Veteran coaches choose their moments carefully to unleash this kind of public criticism on their team.

Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle waited all the way to the seventh game of the season.

It's probably a bit dramatic to refer to Carlisle's commentary after Sunday's 105-96 home loss to the Miami Heat as a rant. Carlisle didn't raise his voice during his postgame news conference, but his words should cut deeply for an experienced bunch of players who pride themselves on professionalism.

Carlisle played the failure-to-compete card, a message he was clearly determined to deliver after the Mavs trailed by 22 midway through the fourth quarter and had to rally in garbage time to make the final score deceivingly appear somewhat respectable.

"I'm concerned with how we're competing as a team," Carlisle said. "We just have a problem right now from top to bottom with consistency. When our level of competitiveness comes up to where it should be on a consistent basis, a lot of our problems will dissipate."

That was Carlisle's response to an inquiry about his concern level regarding the offensive funk of small forward Chandler Parsons, who is 2-of-20 from the floor in the past two games. Carlisle praised Parsons for his defensive effort following Friday's win over the Utah Jazz. That certainly wasn't the case Sunday, when Heat small forward Luol Deng lit it up for 30 points on 13-of-19 shooting.

"He played hard," Carlisle said of Deng. "He did everything hard."

The Mavs, on the other hand, did hardly anything hard.

How else to explain the Heat scoring so easily less than 24 hours after beating the Minnesota Timberwolves in Miami? The Heat shot 55.3 percent from the floor in Dallas. While addressing his team after the game, Carlisle pointed out that 53 of Miami's points came in the final eight seconds of the shot clock, evidence that the Mavs lacked the commitment to play possessions to their completion.

"Especially with a team that's coming off a back-to-back, there's no way they should come into our building on our home court and play harder than us," Parsons said. "We've got to pick it up there. It all starts with that. You can't coach effort. You can't coach intensity. You've got to bring that within yourself every single night.

"Myself and everyone else has to do a better job. It's frustrating shooting it this poorly, but you can correct that. You've got to bring effort regardless of what else is happening."

It'd be a drastic overreaction to call this a crisis point for the Mavs, who have a 4-3 record. But this is twice in the past three games that the Mavs, who were blown out Thursday night in Portland, failed to put up much of a fight.

Carlisle certainly isn't going to stand for that or accept any excuses.

Not that anyone in the locker room was looking for reasons to explain the embarrassing effort. "Flat" is the way Dirk Nowitzki described it.

"It's very disappointing because you never want it to be about competing," said center Tyson Chandler, whose 16-point, 15-rebound night went for naught. "That has to come within. It has to come from within the locker room. We have to pride ourselves and we have to have more pride than we showed tonight."