Cooper Flagg had the ball, a tied game, and 1.2 seconds to end the Dallas Mavericks‘ longest home losing streak in years. He pulled up from 21 feet and missed.
Darius Garland — listed as questionable with a toe injury before tip-off and active anyway — set a new season high with 41 points and 11 assists Saturday night, and the Los Angeles Clippers overcame a nine-point halftime deficit to beat the Mavericks, 138-131, in overtime at American Airlines Center. Dallas falls to 23-48. The Mavericks have not won at home since Jan. 22, a streak now at 11 games. Los Angeles improves to 35-36.
Naji Marshall led Dallas with 28 points. P.J. Washington added 21. Flagg posted 18 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists — along with another entry in the franchise record book — but none of it was enough. The Clippers outscored Dallas 37-27 in the third quarter to erase a nine-point halftime deficit, forced overtime at 122-122, and then pulled away behind Garland, Kawhi Leonard and Derrick Jones Jr. in the extra period to hand the Mavericks their 10th loss in their last 11 home games.
“We played our best basketball there in the first half and just came out flat — they jumped on us,” Dallas coach Jason Kidd said. “But Garland was going and Kawhi.”
Klay Thompson, Dallas Mavericks Build Double-Digit Lead in First Quarter
The night started exactly the way Kidd drew it up. Two days earlier, he had pointed to switching breakdowns, paint protection and ball movement as the areas Dallas needed to fix. For the first 12 minutes, the Mavericks checked every box.
Kidd started Flagg, Washington, Daniel Gafford, Marshall and Max Christie, and the group set the tone immediately. Washington connected from the arc early. Gafford threw down an alley-oop off a Flagg feed. Flagg added a hook shot and converted a free throw. Dallas led 17-13 before Kidd turned to his bench at the 5:53 mark, and what followed was a 16-4 run that blew the game open.
Klay Thompson went 4-of-4 from 3-point range in the opening period off the bench. Twelve points. All threes. All clean. Marvin Bagley III added six on a fast-break alley-oop layup off a Ryan Nembhard feed and a corner 3. The Clippers could not match the pace, and Dallas led 42-32 after one.
It was Thompson’s 22nd game this season with at least four made threes, a benchmark only eight other players in NBA history have reached more often as a bench player in a single season. He now has 166 3-pointers off the bench in 2025-26, second in the league behind Tim Hardaway Jr.‘s 183.
The ball was moving. Everybody was getting touches early. It was the version of this team Dallas had shown the night before in Cleveland, and Kidd said before the game that replicating that pace was the offensive goal.
Kawhi Leonard, Darius Garland Erase Dallas Mavericks’ Lead in Third Quarter
Before the game, Christie was asked to identify the Clippers’ most dangerous element.
“Kawhi is the first and foremost problem for everybody,” Christie said Friday. “He’s playing at such an elite level.”
He was right. And Garland — whose questionable tag had given Dallas some cautious optimism before tip-off — turned out to be every bit as damaging.
Dallas led 72-63 at halftime, having shot 10-of-23 (43.5%) from 3-point range in the first two quarters, tying for its fourth-most made threes in a half all season. The Mavericks held a rebounding advantage, committed just four turnovers and got 15 first-half points from Flagg. The lead felt manageable. Then the third quarter arrived.
Leonard hit back-to-back 3-pointers off Garland assists — both from at least 26 feet, on consecutive possessions — and a one-point Dallas lead became a seven-point Clippers advantage in under 90 seconds. He scored 13 of his 34 points in the third quarter on 4-of-4 shooting. He did not miss. Garland added 11 more. The Clippers outscored the Mavericks 37-27 in the period, and four Dallas turnovers led directly to nine Los Angeles points. A nine-point halftime lead had become a one-point deficit heading into the fourth.
Kidd had singled out switching breakdowns in his pregame session Friday, saying “there’s too many guys getting behind our switching.” In the third quarter Saturday, those exact breakdowns played out, and the Clippers punished every one of them.
Leonard’s 25-or-more-point streak reached nine consecutive games, tying the longest such run of his career. The left ankle sprain that had him listed as questionable two days earlier showed no signs of lingering.
Flagg, who drew the Leonard assignment for stretches, did not back down from what the matchup meant.
“He is great. Honestly, he’s been excellent all year,” Flagg said. “It’s cool just to go to battle. He’s someone I watched for a long time growing up, so it’s been great to battle with him a couple times this year. It’s been fun to compete.”
Naji Marshall, P.J. Washington Force Overtime; Dallas Mavericks Fall in Extra Period
The fourth quarter produced 14 lead changes. The final 33 seconds produced two of the best plays of Dallas’s season — and still were not enough.
Down 120-122 with 27.1 seconds remaining, Marshall stripped Garland at halfcourt. Washington took the outlet, went coast-to-coast and finished a go-ahead dunk with 23.6 seconds left: 122-120 Dallas. Then Leonard caught an inbound from Kris Dunn, drove baseline and laid it in at 19.1 seconds. Tied at 122. Flagg received the ball at halfcourt, pushed into the frontcourt and pulled up from 21 feet at the buzzer.
“Yeah, no, I felt good about it,” Flagg said. “I thought we got a good look, and I was confident in the shot I got. I thought it was balanced and got a great look at it. Just didn’t fall, but it’s a shot I wanted to get to.”
Kidd, watching from the sideline, thought a different option was open in those final seconds.
“Coop had the ball. Instead of pick-and-roll, I thought Klay had a great look in the back room,” Kidd said.
Overtime went sideways immediately. Nembhard won the tap and converted a driving layup off a Flagg assist at 4:40 to put Dallas up 124-122 — the last lead the Mavericks would hold all night. Jones Jr. answered with a corner 3. Garland hit a pull-up 3. Leonard drove for a layup. Jones Jr. hit another 3, pushing the lead to nine at 133-124. Leonard sealed it with a 31-foot pull-up 3 with 1:29 remaining. Dallas’s two late buckets trimmed the final margin to seven, but the night was already decided.
The Clippers shot 6-of-9 (66.7%) from the field in overtime, including 4-of-6 (66.7%) from 3-point range, and committed zero turnovers.
Marshall finished with 28 points on 11-of-23 shooting, four assists and two steals. He has now scored at least 25 points in three of his last four games and nine times this season. Only Flagg, Kyrie Irving and Luka Dončić have more such games in a Mavericks season over the past three years. His defensive strip of Garland in the final half-minute was the most consequential play of the game — it just was not the last one.
“He’s just a basketball player. He loves to compete,” Kidd said. “He had an incredible individual stop on Kawhi to give us that opportunity to win the game in regulation.”
Washington posted 21 points on 7-of-14 shooting, six rebounds and the go-ahead dunk. He played all five minutes of overtime. Dallas played in its 40th clutch game of the season Saturday, tying the Portland Trail Blazers for the most in the NBA this year, and for the fifth time this season played in overtime — the most in a single Mavericks season since 2022-23.
Cooper Flagg Surpasses Luka Dončić on All-Time Teenager List
The missed buzzer-beater was the loudest moment of Flagg’s night. The 40 minutes before it were historically significant.
Flagg finished with 18 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists and a career-high-tying four blocks on 6-of-16 (37.5%) shooting and 6-of-7 (85.7%) from the free-throw line in 40:31. The 18-10-8 line was his 24th career game with at least 15 points, five rebounds and five assists — surpassing Luka Dončić’s 23 for the second-most such games by a teenager in NBA history. The only player ahead of him is LeBron James, who had 40 before turning 20.
The double-double was Flagg’s 11th of the season, second among all rookies behind Maxime Raynaud‘s 15. His three career games with at least 15-10-5 lead all rookies this season; Cedric Coward has two. The line also tied Jason Kidd for second-most 15-10-5 games by a Mavericks rookie in franchise history, trailing only Dončić.
All four of Flagg’s blocks came in consequential moments — twice on Leonard drives, once on a Kris Dunn attempt in the second quarter and once in the closing seconds of regulation. They came on a night Kidd had previewed as “a great test for Coop,” and one that Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said before tip-off had him watching Flagg’s development closely since the teams’ last meeting.
“I feel confident,” Flagg said. “It’s just about getting to what I want to get to. Tonight obviously didn’t go in, but I felt really confident about the shot that I took. I know it’s a shot that I’m capable of making.”
Kidd did not waver in his assessment of where Flagg is headed.
“When you look at what he’s doing at 19, it’s incredible — not just top of his class, but one of the best players in the world,” Kidd said. “The future is extremely bright.”
Ryan Nembhard, Marvin Bagley III Lift Dallas Mavericks Off the Bench
Ryan Nembhard finished with 13 points, nine assists and zero turnovers in 31:20, landing at plus-17 — the best mark on the team. It was the third time this season he has posted at least nine assists without committing a turnover. Brad Davis and Derek Harper are the only other Mavericks to reach that mark three times in a single season. Nembhard is the only rookie in franchise history to have multiple such games and now has three.
Coming off a 12-assist, zero-turnover performance against Atlanta on Wednesday — which Kidd had specifically described as the blueprint heading into Saturday — Nembhard delivered again. He won the overtime tap and immediately set up Flagg’s go-ahead layup to open the extra period.
His 13-5-9 line alongside Flagg’s 18-10-8 made franchise history of a different kind. It was just the fourth time in Mavericks history that two rookies each posted at least 10 points, five rebounds and five assists in the same game, joining Dexter Cambridge and Jim Jackson on March 24, 1993, and Marquis Daniels and Josh Howard, who did it twice.
Bagley III was the most efficient scorer on either team. He shot 7-of-8 (87.5%) from the field, including a perfect 2-of-2 from 3-point range, and posted 17 points and seven rebounds in 24:34. It was the second-highest scoring output of his Dallas tenure — behind only his 22-point performance at Brooklyn on Feb. 24 — and the first time this season he has made multiple 3-pointers in a game. He also surpassed 4,000 career points on the night. Bagley started the third and fourth quarters after Gafford was pulled for evaluation midway through the third period, a role he filled without a drop in efficiency.
Kidd has pushed Bagley to shoot more freely from the perimeter, and the results Saturday reinforced the approach.
“We’ve talked to him — he’s gotta at least get two,” Kidd said. “He’s done that in the flow. He hasn’t forced anything. He took wide-open threes. He understands how to play the game, and that gives us another weapon.”
Bagley spoke plainly about what the night represented.
“I was able to get a little bit of rhythm back tonight, and it felt good,” Bagley said. “It’s something to build on. Obviously we would’ve loved to win, but we’ve just got to make adjustments and move on to the next one.”
What’s Next for the Dallas Mavericks
Kyrie Irving and Dereck Lively II are both done for the season — Irving recovering from left knee surgery and Lively from right foot surgery. Caleb Martin was ruled out before tip-off Saturday with a right heel contusion. Gafford’s status going forward is unclear after he was removed for evaluation in the third quarter and did not return, finishing with 13 rebounds and seven points in 25:18.
The home losing streak now stands at 11. Dallas has not won at American Airlines Center since Jan. 22, allowing at least 123 points in 10 of those losses. Saturday’s 138-point Clippers total and the defensive collapse that turned a nine-point halftime lead into a deficit fit the pattern with uncomfortable precision.
“For us to have 40 clutch games now — it just shows guys are playing late in the season, especially knowing we’re not gonna be in the play-in or playoffs, and guys are still competing at a high level,” Kidd said. “These players today are playing hard. They’re not playing like their record is 20-something and 50. That just shows the character in that locker room, but also the character of our fans. They’re smart fans. They understand the situation.”
Flagg said the support inside American Airlines Center has not gone unnoticed despite the results.
“I think the fans are still showing up for us. Obviously we haven’t been great and haven’t given them a lot to show up for every night, but I’ve loved the support they’ve given me and the team,” Flagg said. “We just have to do a better job giving them things to be happy for and getting wins.”
The Mavericks return to American Airlines Center on Monday to host the Golden State Warriors. Tip-off is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. CT.
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