Jan. 15 (UPI) — Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg sprained his left ankle during a loss to the Denver Nuggets. He attempted a return, but was later ruled out.<\/p>\n
Flagg, who twisted the same left ankle during a win over the Brooklyn Nets on Monday, stepped on Nuggets guard Peyton Watson’s foot and sustained the same injury with 6:01 remaining in the first half of the 118-109 setback Wednesday in Dallas.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
He returned less than four minutes later, but did not play in the second half.<\/p>\n
“They decided to hold him [out] for the second half,” Mavericks coach Jason Kidd told reporters. “And so it’s next man up.”<\/p>\n
Flagg totaled six points, one rebound, one assists and one block in the loss. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft averaged 18.8 points, 6.3 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.3 steals per game through the first 40 starts of his career.<\/p>\n
Mavericks center Daniel Gafford also sprained his right ankle in the loss. He totaled six points and 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Nuggets guard Jamal Murray totaled a game-high 33 points. Center Aaron Gordon logged 22 points, six rebounds and three assists. The Nuggets out-shot the Mavericks 49.4% to 44.1%, including a 42.1% to 14.7% edge in 3-point percentage.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
Kidd said he did not know if Flagg or Gafford would be available for their next game Thursday against the Utah Jazz. The Mavericks (15-26) sit in 12th place in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
They will host the 13th-place Jazz (14-26) at 8:30 p.m. EST Thursday in Dallas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 15 (UPI) — Dallas Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg sprained his left ankle during a loss to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3781],"tags":[877,7,247,225,149,2619,301,187,3943,762,3716,6,302,1146,490,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-539143","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-denver-nuggets","8":"tag-aaron-gordon","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-brooklyn-nets","11":"tag-cooper-flagg","12":"tag-dallas-mavericks","13":"tag-daniel-gafford","14":"tag-denver","15":"tag-denver-nuggets","16":"tag-denvernuggets","17":"tag-jamal-murray","18":"tag-jason-kidd","19":"tag-nba","20":"tag-nuggets","21":"tag-peyton-watson","22":"tag-the-mavericks","23":"tag-utah-jazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115901151616227456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539143","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=539143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}