Cooper Flagg loses 10 points while Mavericks resists to beat Thunder in his pre-championship debut
Cooper Flagg’s official debut in the NBA is upon us.
Flagg played his first game of Preseason on Monday evening for the Dallas Maverks, a few months after the deductible had selected him with the absolute number 1 choice in the draft. Although he only played 14 minutes, he contributed to bringing the Maverks to victory for 106-89 on the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Dickies Arena of Fort Worth, Texas.
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After a somewhat slow start, the first points of the Flagg evening arrived in the second quarter when he scored an acrobatic and contested layup. Not even a minute later he confirmed everything with a triple from the dribble.
Although he did not point out soon, Flagg seemed very at ease out there. He found Dwight Powell for an open -crushed crushed after taking stock in the middle of the first.
At the interval, Flagg was at 10 points and six rebounds after pulling 3 out of 6 from the field. The Maverks recovered a 26 -point advantage during the interval. The Thunders, who beat the Charlotte Hornets on Sunday in the debut race of the Presetson, left the field for only 13 out of 49 in groups in the first 24 minutes.
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Even if the Thunders recovered in the second half-they exceeded Dallas of 10 points in the third, and then opened the fourth quarter with a partial of 21-11-it arrived too late. The Mavericks resisted to get the 17-point victory and start the 1-0 hub. Flagg, together with the rest of the Mavericks holders, has not returned to the second half.
Although in reality it does not count, on Monday evening he marked a fundamental step for Flagg before he officially begins his career in the NBA on 22 October. It is then that the Maverks open their regular season against Victor Wembanyama and San Antonio Spurs.
Flagg dominated the Duke, where he obtained the title of national player of the year and helped the Blue Devils to reach the Final Four. He marked an average of 19.2 points and 7.5 rebounds per game, and has long been considered the favorite to become the number 1 ever in the draft. The Mavericks, a few months after the chaos caused by the exchange of superstar Luka Dončić, extraordinarily won the NBA Draft lottery for the first time in the history of the franchise. They only had 1.8% of the possibility of doing it.
Flagg appeared in just two games of the Summer League for the Mavericks before the team closed it. He lost 31 points in the second game of the team after a very difficult start in which he pulled only 5 out of 21 from the field.
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The Mavericks went 39-43 last season, and largely collapsed after Dončić’s exchange. They faced several significant injuries, including the tear -sized crusader of Kyrie Irving, and the team front office faced a huge repercussions while limp to the finish line just a year after their first race to the NBA finals in more than a decade. Irving is expected to return to the field in the middle of the season.
It is not clear how much the Maverks will use Flagg during the Preseason. Three games remain to the team, starting with the challenge against Charlotte Hornets on Saturday. They will end with a game against Dončić and Lakers on October 15th in Las Vegas.
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But once the season finally starts at the end of this month and Flagg has settled, the expectations in Dallas will certainly be significantly higher after the tumult in which the franchise has rooted last season. Right or not, the eighteen year old will play a fundamental role in letting the team out and bringing it back to the limelight in a western conference already charged.