Saturday\u2019s 125-107 drubbing at the Chicago Bulls<\/a> 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\u2019d love to see him break through the little mini-rookie wall he\u2019s hit lately and provide a few highlights along the way, as he is wont to do in his rookie season.<\/p>\nFlagg 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\u2019s happening, Dallas has looked lost on offense and passive on defense to start too many games recently.<\/p>\n
He had 26 and 10 in Thursday\u2019s 116-114 loss at the Utah Jazz and 20 points on 8-of-15 shooting in Tuesday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The Mavs need a dose of hero ball from the young man who swooped in to the team\u2019s 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\u2019re grasping for something to hang onto here.<\/p>\n
With Davis\u2019 trade value stuck in a crater, who is going to ride shotgun with Flagg from here on out? We\u2019d love to see something from Thompson, Gafford and\/or Marshall, the Mavs\u2019 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\u2019 pump-and-dump scheme before the deadline.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Thompson has shown flashes, but his 3-point shooting is down this year, at 35.8%. He\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019re one Klay away from a deep playoff run, and that is just the kind of small win the Mavericks need between now and then.<\/p>\n
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 Don\u010di\u0107 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s never looked quite right and has alluded to that in several postgame press conferences. He\u2019s not the best rebounding big, and he doesn\u2019t have any post moves, but the Mavs need \u2026 something, anything out of Gafford in the next month if he can be packaged in a trade for a draft pick coming back.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 regional viewership area. It will be streamed on MavsTV and through NBA Leauge Pass where avialale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s over for your little Dallas Mavericks (14-25) on a number of different fronts as the team prepares…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3767],"tags":[7,670,247,3803,39459,6,671],"class_list":{"0":"post-530988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn-nets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-brooklyn","10":"tag-brooklyn-nets","11":"tag-brooklynnets","12":"tag-mavericks-game-coverage","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115880338674940110","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}