{"id":588764,"date":"2026-04-06T08:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T08:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/588764\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T08:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T08:41:08","slug":"cooper-flagg-scores-45-points-as-dallas-mavericks-beat-los-angeles-lakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/588764\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg scores 45 points as Dallas Mavericks beat Los Angeles Lakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teenage rookie Cooper Flagg continued his superb run of form by scoring 45 points as the Dallas Mavericks beat the Los Angeles Lakers 134-128 on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The 19-year-old had made history on Saturday when he became the first teenager to score 50 points in an NBA game – finishing with 51 points, including 24 in the fourth quarter, in a defeat by the Orlando Magic. <\/p>\n

He followed up with a 45-point haul in the win over the injury-hit Lakers, adding nine assists and eight rebounds.<\/p>\n

Flagg is the first rookie with back-to-back 40-point games since Allen Iverson in 1997, and is among the favourites to be named this season’s rookie of the year.<\/p>\n

The Mavericks started quickly against the Lakers, who were missing both the NBA’s leading scorer Luka Doncic<\/a> and rising star Austin Reaves, and were 41-30 up at the end of the first quarter.<\/p>\n

LeBron James, 41, led the Lakers with 30 points, 15 assists and nine rebounds, while Luke Kennard had 15 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists.<\/p>\n

PJ Washington scored 15 points for the Mavericks, Naji Marshall and Brandon Williams added 13 points, and Klay Thompson scored three three-pointers in his 11-point haul. <\/p>\n

Lakers coach JJ Redick it was a “just a poor defensive night” for his side, adding: “We didn’t start the game the right way and just played catch-up the rest of the game.” <\/p>\n

The Lakers are third in the Western Conference, with the 12th-placed Mavericks already out of play-off contention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Teenage rookie Cooper Flagg continued his superb run of form by scoring 45 points as the Dallas Mavericks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-588764","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}