{"id":206135,"date":"2025-10-07T03:12:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T03:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/206135\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T03:12:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T03:12:08","slug":"cooper-flagg-drops-10-points-as-mavericks-hang-on-to-beat-thunder-in-his-preseason-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/206135\/","title":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg drops 10 points as Mavericks hang on to beat Thunder in his preseason debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cooper Flagg\u2019s official NBA debut is almost here.<\/p>\n

Flagg played in his first ever preseason game on Monday night for the Dallas Mavericks, just months after the franchise selected him with the No. 1 overall pick<\/a> in the draft. While he only played 14 minutes, he helped lead the Mavericks to a 106-89 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.<\/p>\n

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After a bit of a slow start, Flagg\u2019s first points of the night came in the second quarter when he sank a wild acrobatic contested layup. He then backed it up with a 3-pointer off the dribble not even a minute later.<\/p>\n

Though he wasn’t scoring early, Flagg looked very comfortable out there. He found Dwight Powell for a wide-open dunk after running the point midway through the first.<\/p>\n

By halftime, Flagg was up to 10 points and six rebounds after he shot 3-of-6 from the field. The Mavericks broke open a 26-point lead at the break, too. The Thunder, who beat the Charlotte Hornets in their preseason opener on Sunday, went just 13-of-49 from the field as a group in the first 24 minutes.<\/p>\n

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While the Thunder rallied in the second half \u2014 they outscored Dallas by 10 points in the third, and then opened the fourth quarter on a 21-11 run \u2014 it came too late. The Mavericks held on to grab the 17-point win and start the preseason 1-0. Flagg, along with the rest of the Mavericks’ starters, didn’t return in the second half.<\/p>\n

While it doesn\u2019t actually count, Monday night marked a critical step for Flagg before he officially kicks off his NBA career on Oct. 22. That\u2019s when the Mavericks will actually open their regular season against Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs.<\/p>\n

Flagg dominated at Duke, where he won consensus National Player of the Year honors and helped the Blue Devils reach the Final Four. He averaged 19.2 points and 7.5 rebounds per game there, and was long considered the favorite to go No. 1 overall in the draft. The Mavericks, just months after the chaos that came with trading away superstar Luka Don\u010di\u0107, remarkably won the NBA Draft lottery for the first time in franchise history. They only had a 1.8% chance to do so, too.<\/p>\n

Flagg appeared in just two Summer League games<\/a> for the Mavericks before the team shut him down. He dropped 31 points in the team\u2019s second game, too, following a very rough start in which he shot just 5-of-21 from the field.<\/p>\n

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The Mavericks went 39-43 last season, and largely fell apart after the Don\u010di\u0107 trade. They dealt with several significant injuries, including Kyrie Irving\u2019s torn ACL, and the team\u2019s front office dealt with immense blowback as they limped to the finish just a year removed from their first NBA Finals run in more than a decade. Irving is expected to make a mid-season return to the court.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear how much the Mavericks will utilize Flagg throughout the rest of the preseason. The team has three games left, starting with a matchup with the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday. They\u2019ll wrap up with a game against Don\u010di\u0107 and the Lakers on Oct. 15 in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

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But once the season finally gets going later this month and Flagg settles in, expectations in Dallas are sure to be significantly higher after the turmoil the franchise was entrenched in last season. Fair or not, the 18-year-old will play a critical part in getting the team out of it and back to prominence in an already loaded Western Conference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cooper Flagg\u2019s official NBA debut is almost here. Flagg played in his first ever preseason game on Monday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[11949,761,760,59052,764,6306,3014,355,6402,4391,51093,2116,99,37567,32090],"class_list":{"0":"post-206135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-charlotte-hornets","9":"tag-cooper-flagg","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-dwight-powell","12":"tag-kyrie-irving","13":"tag-lakers","14":"tag-luka-doncic","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","17":"tag-points","18":"tag-preseason-debut","19":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-the-mavericks","22":"tag-victor-wembanyama"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}