It’s over for your little Dallas Mavericks (14-25) on a number of different fronts as the team prepares to host the Brooklyn Nets (11-24) on Monday at American Airlines Center. Anthony Davis’ finger hurts, so any lingering hope of finding a back-door into the playoff picture is all but gone. Anthony Davis’ finger hurts, so any hope of exciting activity at the NBA Trade Deadline must now be replaced by thinking of what the team can get for the likes of Klay Thompson, Daniel Gafford and/or Naji Marshall. But hey, the silver lining amid all the finger discomfort and general malaise is that an absolutely stacked draft class awaits the NBA also-rans the Mavericks find themselves swimming with as the 2025-26 season nears its midpoint.
For now, fellow also-ran Brooklyn stands in the Mavs’ way of a few more lottery balls on Monday. It’s a hell of a thing to watch your favorite team play and know that the best result in the long run is a loss to a bad team, but here we are.
The last time these two teams met, on Dec. 12, Dallas took a 119-111 win in Brooklyn, behind 24 and 14 from Davis and 22 and eight from rookie sensation Cooper Flagg. That win came during the Mavs’ mirage of six wins in eight games after Davis came back from the calf injury that kept him out for 14 games. One adductor strain and some ligament damage later, Davis will likely be out for a couple of months at least — he might even be on the shelf for the rest of the season if he chooses to have surgery on his finger.
So why even peer between two fingers as your head lay in your hands at the horror show that is sure to unfold on Monday at the AAC? Here are three reasons.
Break through the rookie wall
Flagg is coming off an 11-point performance (4-of-13 shooting) in Saturday’s 125-107 drubbing at the Chicago Bulls and has had three off games in his last five. Without Davis for the Dallas offense to lean on, Flagg needs to take this thing over the rest of the way. You’d love to see him break through the little mini-rookie wall he’s hit lately and provide a few highlights along the way, as he is wont to do in his rookie season.
Flagg needs to be involved early and often to help the Mavs get off to a better start against the lowly Nets. He has done a good job of letting each game come to him, but while that’s happening, Dallas has looked lost on offense and passive on defense to start too many games recently.
He had 26 and 10 in Thursday’s 116-114 loss at the Utah Jazz and 20 points on 8-of-15 shooting in Tuesday’s 100-98 win at the Sacramento Kings, but in two games before those and one since, Flagg has combined to shoot just 12-of-40 (30%) from the field.
The Mavs need a dose of hero ball from the young man who swooped in to the team’s rescue after a stroke of miraculous NBA Draft Lottery luck. The Rookie of the Year race is on between Flagg and his Duke teammate Kon Knueppel, and Flagg needs to go and grab it instead of letting it come to him if and when it will. We’re grasping for something to hang onto here.
With Davis’ trade value stuck in a crater, who is going to ride shotgun with Flagg from here on out? We’d love to see something from Thompson, Gafford and/or Marshall, the Mavs’ last best trade assets. Any one of those three could help a contender, and a stretch of good form from that trio could help the Mavs’ pump-and-dump scheme before the deadline.
Marshall has been solid to very good this season and is likely a starter the rest of the way, or at least as long as P.J. Washington is sidelined with his ankle injury. Marshall comes into Monday’s game averaging 13.4 points on 53.5% shooting from the floor, to go along with 4.6 rebounds, 2.6 assists and a steal per game this year. That mirrors his production from last year, which was the best year of Marshall’s NBA career. His toughness and skill in the paint has definite value, and his contract should make him an attractive option for contending teams looking to enhance their roster.
Thompson has shown flashes, but his 3-point shooting is down this year, at 35.8%. He’s only getting 22 minutes per game, fewer than even the 24.4 he played in his rookie season way back in 2011-12 with the Golden State Warriors. He’s been a little better of late, shooting it at just a hair over 37% since the start of December. One heater before now and Feb. 5 may be all it takes for some contender to convince themself that they’re one Klay away from a deep playoff run, and that is just the kind of small win the Mavericks need between now and then.
Thompson signed with Dallas, expecting to be on the receiving end of some of the highest-quality looks of his career, due to the all-everything basketball savant Luka Dončić playing beside him. Without that generational shot-creating force, he looks average on a bad team, scoring just over 11 points per game this season.
Gafford has been an eye sore for most of this year after limping into the season following his own ankle injury in training camp. He’s never looked quite right and has alluded to that in several postgame press conferences. He’s not the best rebounding big, and he doesn’t have any post moves, but the Mavs need … something, anything out of Gafford in the next month if he can be packaged in a trade for a draft pick coming back.
The Mavericks host the Nets on Monday at American Airlines Center, with tipoff scheduled for 7:30 p.m. The game will be televised locally on KFAA Channel 29 and on sister stations throughout the Mavs’ regional viewership area. It will be streamed on MavsTV and through NBA Leauge Pass where avialale.