The first important pass of Dallas’ 120-96 victory over Oklahoma City ended with an unlikely sight on the scoreboard: Daniel Gafford making a 3-pointer. With 8:29 left in the opening quarter, Cooper Flagg assisted the shot, putting the Mavericks ahead 8-7 and beginning a night in which Flagg’s passing mattered nearly as much as his scoring.
Flagg finished with 26 points, eight assists and zero turnovers. Kyrie Irving supplied 15 points and four assists, and the Mavericks finished with 30 assists against nine turnovers. Those numbers describe an offense that could move creation between its two primary initiators instead of requiring either one to solve every possession alone.
The connection showed up twice more before the first quarter ended. Flagg assisted Irving on 3-pointers at 6:58 and with 10 seconds remaining. The first made it 13-11, and the second produced Dallas’ 33-28 advantage. Irving’s shot-making gave the Mavericks another scoring source; Flagg’s passes helped put that source in position to matter.
The destinations changed in the second quarter. At 2:14, Flagg assisted P.J. Washington on a hook that made it 58-51. Thirty-six seconds later, Morez Johnson converted a layup from Flagg to push Dallas ahead 60-53. The value of those plays was their variety: Washington’s hook and Johnson’s layup were different finishes, and both came from the same distributor without a turnover attached.
Flagg kept that variety going after halftime. At 9:49 of the third quarter, he assisted Irving on a floater for a 67-61 lead. At 7:30, Gafford finished an alley-oop from Flagg, extending the margin to 78-63.
With one minute left in the period, Flagg found Caleb Martin for a 21-foot jumper that made it 92-77. A floater, a dunk and a jumper require different kinds of finishes. Flagg’s contribution was the pass that connected each one to the broader offense.
The assist total was especially useful because Flagg’s shooting was good without being pristine. He went 10 for 23 from the field and 2 for 8 from 3-point range. His 26 points helped build the lead, but the eight assists prevented the night from becoming a simple account of how often he could score. Dallas had other answers available, and Flagg kept locating them.
The Mavericks needed those answers in the fourth quarter, when Flagg had already scored all of his points. Irving assisted Martin on a 3-pointer at 7:31, and Martin’s shot helped maintain Dallas’ separation. Washington then scored seven points in the quarter: a 3-pointer at 5:26, a layup at 4:41 and a pull-up at 3:27.
Those baskets took the score from 108-93 to 115-93, with Oklahoma City’s Ajay Mitchell still supplying meaningful resistance.
