After an off-season in which the Dallas Mavericks selected Cooper Flagg with the first pick in the NBA Draft, Wednesday night kicked off the 2025-26 NBA season in Big D. In what has become a recurring
theme over the past few seasons, Dallas opened against the San Antonio Spurs, but were blown off their home court 125-92 against their division rival.
As a recap for both new readers and those who simply need a refresher after a long summer, we will assign grades to Mavericks players on an alphabetical scale of: D, C-, C, C+, B-, B, B+, A-, A, A+ (a 1-10 scale if you will). Players will generally be graded to scale such that an A+ for Anthony Davis will warrant a different output than an A+ for Dwight Powell.
New for this season, we have a few changes to the layout and overall approach. For starters, we’ll be abbreviating the statistical categories so the associated number is not lost in a field of words. We will also utilize a more stylized font and caps so each player and grade is easier to locate. Additionally, we’ll be focusing the grades on slightly fewer players – the 5 starters and 2 or 3 bench players – so you can home in on the primary contributors and key aspects of the game.
Join us in the Comments section where you can offer up your own grades for those players who don’t feature in the main article. We also welcome your feedback as we experiment with new layouts. Without further ado, here are the grades for your Dallas Mavericks after the season opener.
COOPER FLAGG: B
10 PTS / 10 REB / 0 AST / 1 STL / 0 BLK – 32 MIN
Flagg opened his career on the receiving end of an alley-oop, but couldn’t put it down. Perhaps that was the best thing for the roof of the AAC, which would have no doubt blown off had he finished the dunk. Once that was out of the way, it didn’t get much better. Flagg shot an inefficient 4-for-13 and had three turnovers. For large parts of the first half he was hardly featured in a disjointed offense, doing most of his damage in the second half. It was a quiet debut, but still ended in a double-double.
KLAY THOMPSON: C-
10 PTS / 2 REB / 1 AST / 0 STL / 0 BLK – 22 MIN
Thompson’s forte is shooting, but that wasn’t the case tonight. Going 4-for-13 overall and 1-for-5 from three resulted in Thompson bringing very little to the game. Between team foul trouble and experimenting with lineups, it’s not a total surprise he got few open looks, but regardless, he simply had a rough night with few positives to make up for the poor shooting.
P.J. WASHINGTON: B+
17 PTS / 5 REB / 1 AST / 0 STL / 1 BLK – 29 MIN
Washington opened the game with defense on his mind, but it earned him a quick trip to the bench after picking up two fouls in just over two minutes. He returned to the court in the second quarter and instantly became the best player on the team, hitting four of five shot attempts, including two from beyond the arc. He quieted down a bit after that, ending his night shooting 7-for-11, but aside from the early fouls he did just about everything you would want from him.
ANTHONY DAVIS: C
22 PTS / 13 REB / 1 AST / 2 STL / 1 BLK – 32 MIN
Davis simply could not find his shot in this one. Part of his poor shooting was attributable to rough offensive flow and hardly any conventional plays being run for him, but it was still ugly. To his credit, he was engaged and active to the tune of a first half double-double, nailed his free throws and hit threes at a decent clip. Ultimately the bad far outweighed the good. Davis was massively outplayed by Victor Wembanyama throughout the entire game. When Davis wasn’t fouling (four in the first half), he was offering zero resistance at all. The stat line doesn’t look bad on the surface, but it somewhat belies what actually took place on the court.
DERECK LIVELY: C-
4 PTS / 2 REB / 3 AST / 0 STL / 0 BLK – 10 MIN
When you’re the defensive anchor on a team that has a primary focus on defense, picking up three fouls in the first quarter is not ideal. It would normally be difficult to grade a starter that logged less than 12 minutes, but in this case the limited court time was largely a byproduct of excessive fouling and generally mundane play. Two seasons ago, Lively got the better of Wembanyama in their first game, but the script was massively flipped in this one. He was decent relative to his limited time, but generally ineffective, leaving hardly any impact on the game besides a nice alley-oop dunk.
D’ANGELO RUSSELL: C-
6 PTS / 2 REB / 3 AST / 0 STL / 0 BLK – 15 MIN
Russell was 1-for-5 from the floor and it seemed like every miss was a layup. Most of his damage came from the free throw line, but even there he only hit 4-for-6. For a team that could have used some true point guard play, Russell did not get enough time and was unable to capitalize on the time he did get.
The mantra from the Mavericks brass is that defense wins championships and they have built their team accordingly. The starting five had 12 fouls in the first half. That is not elite defense. The Mavs gave up 60 points in the first half. That is not elite defense. While offense might be secondary to this team, lineups that feature no true point guard, a multitude of missed layups, balls passed to guys sitting on the bench and fast breaks that ended in unforced turnovers all make for a disastrous combination that’s difficult to overcome. That combination is what gets you absolutely walloped by 32 points.
It’s only the first of 82 games and the team will take time to develop chemistry and flow, but they will do it. Whether or not the team, as constructed, has all they need to execute at a high level on a nightly basis is yet to be determined, but we’ll find out more on Friday night. For this evening though, this was about as forgettable as it gets. A supposed defensive powerhouse getting completely blown off their own court in the season opener with the number one pick debuting simply cannot happen.
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