The Matchup<\/p>\n
PositionNuggetsMavericksAdvantagePGJamal MurrayRyan NembhardNuggetsSGCam JohnsonNaji MarshallEvenSFPeyton WatsonP.J. WashingtonEvenPFSpencer JonesCooper FlaggMavsCNikola JokicAnthony DavisNuggetsBenchBruce Brown, Jonas Valanciunas, Tim Hardaway Jr., Zeke Nnaji, Jalen PickettKlay Thompson, Daniel Gafford, Caleb Martin, Brandon Williams, Jaden HardyEven<\/p>\n
Injury Report*: Aaron Gordon \u2013 out (hamstring), Christian Braun \u2013 out (ankle), Tamar Bates \u2013 out (foot), DaRon Holmes II \u2013 out (G-League), Curtis Jones \u2013 out (G-League); Brandon Williams \u2013 questionable (ankle), Max Christie \u2013 questionable (illness), Dereck Lively II \u2013 out (foot), Kyrie Irving \u2013 out (knee), Dante Exum \u2013 out (knee). *Official injury report was not available at time of writing.<\/p>\n
The Three Things<\/p>\n
The thing to watch for: The #1 Pick<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/USATSI_27720073-1-1024x683.jpg\")
Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
The Nuggets will get their second official look at Flagg tonight. By and large he\u2019s fit the billing of a generational prospect. No, he\u2019s not blowing the doors off everyone night in and night out but no rookies ever do, not Wemby, not LeBron, not Cooper. He\u2019s putting up over 18 points a game (including 24 against Denver in the first meeting) and put up his biggest scoring effort of his young career a week ago with 42 points against the Utah Jazz. Flagg is clearly the future for Dallas and as he gets more and more comfortable in the league they will start running the offense more and more through him. I don\u2019t expect Dallas to be a lottery team long\u2026unless they decide to trade their generational talent for an aging star or something.<\/p>\n
The thing to remember: Nuggets need some get back<\/p>\n
Speaking of aging stars Dallas traded generational talents for, Anthony Davis had no problem turning back the clock against the Nuggets in the game three weeks ago and was a key catalyst in the Mavericks getting the upset. Despite being on the opposite side of thirty, AD is still averaging a 20-10 double double and can go off on any given night. In addition to the Mavericks starting bigs, they have a solid bench with vets like Klay Thompson, Daniel Gafford and Gabe Vincent. The Nuggets will have to maintain their focus if they want to return the favor of beating this team on their home court.<\/p>\n
The thing to bet: Peyton Watson over 1.5 threes (+149)<\/p>\n
A bit of a gamble here, Peyton only averages 1.3 three point makes per game but he\u2019s currently shooting 41% from the field and I think teams are still not ready to honor that. Peyton finds himself shooting his fair share of \u201cprove it\u201d threes and to his credit he has proven it quite a bit. Both the Mavericks and Nuggets are playing the second game of a back to back. Guys will be tired. While you might argue this means players are less likely to hit threes because tired legs equal short shots, I argue that the fatigue manifests itself far more when it comes to closing out on shooters. A pair of tired teams means more jumpers and less drives and means more defenders choosing to let shooters \u201cprove it\u201d instead of closing out. There, I\u2019ve talked myself into the gamble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing says the Christmas season like a quick trip to Dallas\u2026or something. That will be the case for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[32331,4643,32329,4642,102,104,2582,103,6389,32334,4648,3080,6408,154],"class_list":{"0":"post-99557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-aaron-gordon","9":"tag-anthony-davis","10":"tag-christian-braun","11":"tag-cooper-flagg","12":"tag-dallas","13":"tag-dallas-headlines","14":"tag-dallas-mavericks","15":"tag-dallas-news","16":"tag-denver-nuggets","17":"tag-jamal-murray","18":"tag-klay-thompson","19":"tag-nba","20":"tag-nikola-jokic","21":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}