IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Oct 23, 2026 9:59 PM
Dallas fell apart when its top options went to the bench, raising questions about the team's ability to survive the minutes that will define its season.
The Mavericks have two players capable of carrying an offense, and on most nights this season, at least one of them will be sitting.
That is the practical consequence of Kyrie Irving’s return. He is 19 months removed from a torn ACL, turns 35 in March and opened the second quarter Wednesday in Houston on the bench as part of a minutes restriction that is not going away. Add a league-high 16 back-to-backs, and the math becomes unavoidable.
The game slipped away in exactly that window.
Dallas trailed just 32-26 after one quarter. Then Dusty May pulled Cooper Flagg at the 8:37 mark of the second, leaving Sergio de Larrea, Marcus Sasser, Max Christie, Naji Marshall and Morez Johnson Jr. against a Houston group featuring Kevin Durant, Alperen Şengün, Fred VanVleet, Marcus Smart and Reed Sheppard.
The Rockets outscored Dallas 11-6 over the next three minutes while the Mavericks committed three turnovers. May got Flagg back in during a timeout at 5:45, but the momentum had already shifted. Houston closed the half on a 19-2 run to take a 70-38 lead.
The numbers underneath it are worse than the score suggested. According to databallr’s WOWY (with or without you) tool, Dallas played 11 minutes with both Flagg and Irving off the floor, excluding fourth-quarter garbage time, and posted a net rating of minus-41.8.
The offense was not really the problem. Dallas scored at a 104.0 rate in those minutes, only 6.0 points per 100 possessions below its overall mark. Its true shooting percentage actually ticked up to 57.1%.
The defense collapsed. Opponents posted a 145.8 offensive rating in those minutes, a 35.8-point swing from the Mavericks’ baseline, while Houston shot 75% from 3-point range against those groups.
Some of that is noise, since nobody sustains 75% shooting from deep and 11 minutes proves very little. But the group itself is worth examining. Those lineups leaned on P.J. Washington, Marshall, Sasser, Zaccharie Risacher and Johnson, a collection of solid players with no clear organizing principle and no reliable shot creator. Risacher and Sasser arrived in July. Johnson was making his NBA debut and had four fouls before halftime.
That is the actual challenge in front of May, Friday in Indiana and Saturday in the home-opener vs. the Spurs and beyond.
Flagg and Irving will be fine as Flagg scored 32 in the opener and looks ready for the leap everyone expected. The games will be decided during the 15 to 20 minutes per night when one or both are sitting.
Good teams solve this with structure. They build a bench unit with an identity, a backup creator and defensive principles that hold regardless of personnel. Dallas does not have those pieces in place yet, which is unsurprising for a roster assembled three months ago under a coach who has never managed an NBA rotation.
The encouraging part is that it is October. One game produced one ugly sample, and there are 81 more chances to sort it out. Dallas gets two of them immediately, traveling to Indiana on Friday before hosting San Antonio on Saturday in the home opener.
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