Cooper Flagg drops 10 points as Mavericks hang on to beat Thunder in his preseason debut
The official beginnings of Cooper Flagg in the NBA are almost there.
Flagg played in his very first pre-season match on Monday evening for the Dallas Mavericks, only a few months after the franchise selected it with the overall choice n ° 1 of the draft. When he only played 14 minutes, he helped lead the Mavericks to a 106-89 victory against Oklahoma City Thunder in Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
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After a little slow start-up, the first points of the Flagg night came to the second quarter when he sank a disputed wild acrobatic lay-up. He then supported it with a 3 -point pointer from the dribble not even a minute later.
Although he did not score early, Flagg looked very comfortable there. He found Dwight Powell for a large open dunk after having run the point halfway through the first.
At halftime, Flagg was up to 10 points and six rebounds after shooting 3 out of 6 on the field. The Mavericks also opened a 26 -point lead at the break. The Thunder, who beat Charlotte’s Hornets in his pre-season opening match on Sunday, went only 13 out of 49 of the field in the first 24 minutes.
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While the Thunder rallied in the second half – they were ahead of Dallas by 10 points in the third, then opened the fourth quarter on a race of 21-11 – it arrived too late. The Mavericks maintained themselves to win the 17-point victory and start the pre-season 1-0. Flagg, as well as the rest of the starters of the Mavericks, did not return in the second half.
Although this does not really count, Monday evening marked a critical stage for Flagg before officially launching his NBA career on October 22. It was then that the Mavericks will open their regular season against Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.
Flagg dominated in Duke, where he won the honors of the national player of the year consensus and helped the Blue Devils to reach the Final Four. He collected on average 19.2 points and 7.5 rebounds per game there, and has long been considered the favorite to go n ° 1 in total in the draft. The Mavericks, just a few months after the chaos that came with the superstar of the exchange, Luka Dončić, remarkably won the Lottery of the NBA draft for the first time in the history of the franchise. They also had only 1.8% chance of doing so.
Flagg appeared in only two summer championship games for the Mavericks before the team closed it. He also lost 31 points in the team’s second game, after a very difficult start in which he only drew 5 out of 21 on the field.
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The Mavericks went 39-43 last season and widely collapsed after Dončić’s trade. They treated several major injuries, including the torn LCA from Kyrie Irving, and the team front of the team treated an immense return of flowers while they were drinking on arrival a year deleted from their first NBA final in more than a decade. Irving should return from mid-season to the court.
We do not know how much the Mavericks will use flatula throughout the rest of the pre-season. The team had three games, starting with a match with the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday. They will end with a match against Dončić and the Lakers on October 15 in Las Vegas.
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But once the season finally takes place later this month and Flagg settles down, expectations in Dallas are sure to be considerably higher after turmoil, the franchise was rooted last season. Just or not, the 18 -year -old will play an essential role in getting the team out of it and returning in importance in an already busy Western conference.
