After appearing in a pair of games this week, Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg is back on the injury report for Sunday’s contest at Toronto, writes Grant Afseth of Dallas Hoops Journal (subscription required). Flagg, who missed close to a month with a left midfoot sprain, admitted that the foot was bothering him in Friday’s game at Boston.
“It was a little awkward,” said Flagg, who’s listed as questionable. “It was a little sore, but it was something I could play through. It was a little tender, but nothing I couldn’t deal with.”
Flagg played 30 minutes on Friday, but had to leave the game for evaluation after slipping in the first quarter. He went through stretching and movement drills with a trainer, then rode the stationary bike for a while before returning to action. He shot a combined 14-of-45 in the two games since the injury, but he attributes that to the long layoff rather than his health.
“I’m getting to my spots and taking the shots I want,” Flagg said. “They’re just not falling right now. It’s about getting my rhythm and touch back, and I’m not worried about it.”
There’s more from the Southwest Division:
- Marvin Bagley III has been upgraded to questionable for Sunday after missing the past five games with a neck sprain, Afseth adds. Bagley, who was acquired from Washington as part of last month’s Anthony Davis trade, has been productive since joining the Mavericks, averaging 13.0 points and 8.9 rebounds in seven games.
- Grizzlies forward Olivier-Maxence Prosper has his sights set higher after being promoted from a two-way contract to a standard deal this week, Damichael Cole of The Memphis Commercial Appeal states. Prosper said he’s “grateful, but not satisfied” and wants to prove himself even more during the final five weeks of the season. “It’s just belief in myself and trusting that everything is going to work out,” Prosper said. “Staying true to the process. Staying true to my work. It was definitely something that I’m very grateful about (and) very happy.”
- The Spurs continued their remarkable season by erasing a 25-point deficit in Friday’s win over the Clippers, per Michael C. Wright of ESPN. Victor Wembanyama said after the game that he was “about to pass out” and called it one of the high points of his time in the NBA. “That was one of the best wins,” he added. “That was one of the best games, best parts of my career, my basketball life.”
Dallas is in full tank mode. Flagg will be “injured” a lot moving forward.
The Mavs tanking was one of the easiest predictions going into the season. I have no idea how anyone in their right mind could predict they’d be a .500 team or something like that. Tank was written all over them before the season started.
Actually, I feel pretty good about my preseason predictions:
link to hoopsrumors.com
– I had the Mavs under at 41.5 . That 41.5 was just ridiculous.
– Denver under at 53.5, which I think will hold as they are 39-25 after 64 games and will need to win 15 or more out of 20 to get above 53 wins. Denver are not a super-high regular-season win team, even with Jokic.
– Atlanta under, at some point it was like 48.5, then came down to 46.5. My reasoning was mostly because of Trae (and they were awful with him), but even without him, that 47-49 bar was too high for them.
– I had Detroit as an over at 46.5. I feel really good about that one. Coaching, squad, org. It was all pointing towards them having a good season, and it’s panning out exactly like that.
– And I said many times in the summer I expected Boston to be good, like here:
link to hoopsrumors.com
I feel good about that one, too :) They are already above their preseason over-under, and they even have a realistic chance to meet my lofty expectation of 50 wins. They will certainly not be lower than 5th, as I predicted.
– And I also felt that Phoenix would not be horrible. I was mostly writing about this on bulletsforever, where many fellow Wizards fans were hoping them to have a horrible season, as we hold the right to swap. I felt they wouldn’t be bad. Now, I didn’t think they’d be as good as they are, lol. But I definitely didn’t hope they’d win fewer than 30 games. Their over-under was 30.5.
Should I start betting? My predictions are pretty good, lol. I wonder how much I’d make if I bet a 100 on those over-unders at the same time.
Also, I feel good about not making predictions about Philly, LAL, GSW. Those were hard to gauge. And I feel good about not saying anything about tanking teams like Jazz, Brooklyn, Washington. Who could realistically predict if they were going to win more or fewer than 18-19-20 games? There’s no method to it; it’s just guessing.
Good predicting.
You are so cool………
Mostly based on luck. I’m sure the gambling industry would love for you to wager over/unders next season.
“Mostly based on luck. I’m sure the gambling industry would love for you to wager over/unders next season.”
Why luck? When it comes to predictions on of the good strategies is to listen to what the talking heads are prattling about and be reasonably critical of it.
Like people were saying “Denver took OKC to game 7, and they improved over the summer”. Sorry, what? What does that series have to do with the regular season? And Denver weren’t even that good in that series anyway, it’s just that OKC missed their shots. Denver were going to get a big improvement from signing Cam Johnson? It was just a salary move because their owners are cheap, lmao.
Denver won more than 54 games only once with Jokic being as good as any other player’s peak in history. They routinely lose to the Wizards and the Hornets in the league.
If anything, Denver are overperforming because Murray decided to show up, and Watson came out of nowhere. Jokic is a gigantic man. I saw how huge he was at Eurobasket. And he’s in his 30s. Even without ever jumping or otherwise leaving the floor, he will start to get injured more.
Or like people were talking about this solid season Dallas were going to have, led by Cooper Flagg. Yeah, sure. When was the last time a rookie did that? Tim Duncan 30-something years ago? It was plain stupid to expect a decent season from Dallas. “Angry AD, Kyrie returning before playoffs, solid frontcourt”…
Boston, on the other hand, is a team you can expect to be competent and get the most out of their players. Which is what Mazzulla is doing.
But I agree that the gambling industry would love to have me, lol. That’s why I’d rather make my predictions in the comments.
When I was growing up, some of my friends and classmates gambled, and they were all complete morons. And now, years later, they’re nowhere in life. That made too much of an impression on me, and I will forever associate gambling with dumb people who don’t do well in life.
Nice to know that you’re completely full of yourself, congratulations.
Golfclap…
He is only playing because of the 65 game rule, hopefully he doesnt worsen his injury
returning from injury and playing both ends of a back to back is nonsensical in todays NBA, doesn’t make any sense from an organizational perspective, but it is the Mavs……
65 game rule doesn’t matter for rookie of the year or all rookie team honors and Flagg isn’t making an All NBA team.
Wemby stop trying to be dramatic… pass out you played 21min. Yes team made great comeback but playoff games are more intense.
They were on the road from February 8th until march 5th. (Played two home games in Austin). Participated in all star game and had 3 back to backs in that span. It really was the brutal part of there schedule.
I would rather a player be dramatic as Wemby can sometimes be vs not care enough. Dude truly cares about winning, no doubt about that.