Cooper Flagg assisted Kyrie Irving on the basket that broke a 100-100 tie. On Dallas’ next scoring trip, Irving supplied Flagg. In the space of those two possessions, the Mavericks gave their late offense a more interesting shape than another argument about whose turn it was to shoot.
Those two plays helped the Mavericks beat the Houston Rockets, 116-111, at American Airlines Center on Friday. Irving scored 35 points and Flagg added 33, combining for 68, while their 15 assists offered a more useful description of the late offense than the scoring total alone. Dallas had two creators capable of making the other one’s possession better.
The 18 team-inclusive turnovers also made the performance far too ragged to serve as a declaration that the offense needs no further work.
Dallas had been showing pieces of that arrangement earlier in the fourth quarter. Flagg assisted Irving on a two-point basket with 9:42 remaining, and Irving later found Daniel Gafford for a dunk at 6:16. Those plays did not decide the night, but they made the same argument in less dramatic form.
The best Dallas possession did not always have to end with the first star who touched the ball.
The Mavericks needed that flexibility because the fourth quarter began with Houston ahead 84-76. Dallas scored 15 of the first 19 points in the period, moving from an eight-point deficit to a 91-88 lead in 4:59. Irving accounted for 16 fourth-quarter points, including the three-pointer that produced the lead at 7:01.
Flagg contributed 11 points in the period and scored twice after Houston had tied the game at 96-96, first putting Dallas ahead 98-96 and then 100-96. Houston eventually drew even again at 100, setting up the reciprocal sequence that decided the game.
The shared creation did not exclude everyone else. Caleb Martin hit a three-pointer at 7:43 after P.J. Washington’s assist, then scored on an Irving assist with 5:57 to play.
Gafford finished with 18 points on 6-of-7 shooting, and Dallas generated 28 fast-break points to Houston’s 10. Martin and Gafford were participants in the scoring, rather than spectators to a private exchange between the two leading scorers.
The accounting gets less flattering once turnovers enter the picture. Dallas committed 18 turnovers including the team turnover, compared with Houston’s 13. Flagg had three and Irving two; Gafford and Walter Clayton Jr. also finished with three apiece.
Houston scored 20 points off Dallas’ giveaways. The Mavericks could absorb that waste because Irving and Flagg combined to shoot 25 of 38 from the field, an extraordinary conversion rate. It is also a dangerous cushion to treat as a permanent solution.
