Cooper Flagg, the centerpiece of the preview, did it more as a passer this time. He finished with 25 points and 12 assists. That's the version of Flagg that makes this offense hard to guard, because when he's setting people up, the shooters around him get open looks. P.J. Washington took most of them. He scored 26 with 6 rebounds and went 6-of-10 from 3, his 2nd straight big scoring night after leading everyone with 23 against Utah.
Washington's shooting is what turned a comfortable lead into a rout. A 20-point halftime lead against a team on tired legs is usually safe. Dallas hit 30-plus in every quarter, so Brooklyn never got close enough to make it interesting. The Mavericks scored 34 in the 3rd and took a 100-71 lead into the 4th.
The box score we found doesn't tell us how Brooklyn's headliners did. Michael Porter Jr. and Julius Randle were supposed to carry the scoring. Nolan Traore was the point guard the preview liked. Day'Ron Sharpe was supposed to win the glass against a Dallas team without Dereck Lively II. The line score is enough to judge all of them as a group, though. The Nets never scored more than 26 in a quarter and finished with 93, 28 fewer than they put up in Atlanta. If Porter and Randle had a big night, it didn't add up to much. The same goes for Kyrie Irving's 2nd game back in the starting lineup: Dallas didn't need him to take over, and our search didn't turn up his line.
For Dallas, this was a game it should win, and it won it easily. The Mavs bounced back from the Sacramento loss with 2 straight double-digit home wins. They did it with Lively, Sergio de Larrea and Tarik Biberovic all still out, and the Flagg-to-Washington connection is turning into the offense's most reliable play. Brooklyn is 2-8 with 3 games left on this road trip, and it couldn't hold up for 48 minutes on the second night of a back-to-back.
