The Dallas Mavericks beat the Miami Heat 113-109 on Monday night, and Cooper Flagg finished it the way stars are supposed to. The 19-year-old scored or assisted on 14 of Dallas' 16 points in the last six minutes of the fourth quarter, with 12 of those points coming from him alone.
That is why this Mavs Game will be remembered now, not later. Flagg made a spin-fade jumper over Pelle Larson while taking contact, then buried the free throw. With two minutes left, he hit his second 3-pointer of the night. He also drove past Giannis Antetokounmpo for a basket, then blocked Andrew Wiggins on a corner 3-point try and scored at the other end to push the lead to four. Dallas is 2-2, while Miami fell to 0-4.
The wider weight of the night is that Flagg did this against a Heat team with a former MVP, multiple All-Stars and a championship-winning coach. Dallas did not need a careful, committee win. It needed someone to take the ball, the moment and the defense closing in, and Flagg did that against a roster built to make it hard.
P.J. Washington was huge, and Zaccharie Risacher, Walter Clayton Jr. and Daniel Gafford all had their moments in the win. But Flagg was the one who bent the game late. Through the first week of the season, Basketball Reference had him leading the universe in player efficiency rating, and this closing stretch gave that number a real-world test against serious opposition.
There is still a larger question underneath the result: whether he can keep doing this for a full season. The Mavericks had gone more than two-and-a-half years without meaningful playoff-style basketball around their young superstar, and Monday night felt like the first time in a long time that the final minutes belonged to Dallas again.
