The Brooklyn Nets arrived in Dallas on Sunday night carrying the weight of a one-point loss, a short flight from Atlanta, and no time to reset. Their matchup with the Dallas Mavericks came less than 24 hours after Brooklyn fell 124-121 to the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday night.
That is why this game drew attention. The Nets were asked to turn quickly from a loss in which they out-rebounded Atlanta by 13 and still let the game slip away because they gave up rebounds late, while Dallas came in off a 112-100 home win over the Utah Jazz in an NBA Cup game. For Brooklyn, the search now was not about the result in Atlanta alone. It was about how a tired roster would hold up against a team that had already settled into its own rhythm.
One reason the Mavericks looked more settled was Kyrie Irving, who was back after missing last year with an ACL tear and was averaging 21 points a night. Brooklyn’s own young backcourt also had a spotlight of its own after Nolan Traoré scored 19 points and had a career-high five steals in 22 minutes against Atlanta, even though he did not play in the fourth quarter. Day’ron Sharpe added the first triple-double of his career with 12 points, ten rebounds and 13 assists, the kind of line that can matter on a night when a team is short on rest and long on travel.
The harder question for Brooklyn was whether that energy could last for 48 minutes. The Nets had little to lose by giving their young guards a longer look, but they also had to clean up the same late possession problems that undid them against Atlanta. Dallas, meanwhile, was trying to keep building toward a return to the playoffs after missing them for a few years, with Irving back in the mix and the club looking for steadier nights from its top end.
Cooper Flagg was part of that conversation too, because in a recent game against the San Antonio Spurs he was relatively uninvolved in the Mavericks' crunch time offense. David Trink said that did not mean Flagg was incapable, noted that Dallas had already seen him take over fourth quarters multiple times this year, and added that if the Mavericks want to be a serious playoff contender they cannot have strange nights like that from him. The next test for Brooklyn was simple: whether a team on a back-to-back could survive Dallas long enough to turn one hard loss into a response instead of another one.
