The Dallas Mavericks played their most emotionally loaded road game of the season Friday night and still could not find a way to win.
Cooper Flagg returned to TD Garden for the first time as a professional, Jayson Tatum made his season debut after 298 days away with a torn right Achilles tendon, and the Boston Celtics took care of business, 120-100, extending Dallas’s losing streak to six games and dropping the Mavericks to 21-42 on the season.
Jaylen Brown led Boston with 24 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. Tatum posted a 15-point, 12-rebound double-double with seven assists in 27 minutes. Derrick White added 20 points off the bench. Neemias Queta was a force in the paint, finishing with 16 points on 6-for-8 shooting and a game-high 15 rebounds.
Flagg finished with 16 points, eight rebounds and six assists in 30 minutes, but the shooting was a problem for the second straight night since returning from the left midfoot sprain. He went 7-for-23 from the field and 0-for-4 from three, finishing minus-17 in a game Dallas needed him to carry offensively with much of the roster either injured or limited.
The rest of the starting unit did not provide much relief. Khris Middleton went 2-for-8 for seven points and finished minus-18. P.J. Washington struggled as well, managing five points on 2-for-9 shooting. Dwight Powell contributed two points in 15 minutes.
The bench was a different story. Klay Thompson, returning from injury, posted 19 points on 7-for-13 shooting in 18 minutes, going 5-for-11 from three. Naji Marshall added 13 points on 6-for-12 shooting. Max Christie shot the ball cleanly, finishing with 12 points on 4-for-6 from three in 29 minutes.
Cooper Flagg Battles Through Foot Concern in Emotional Night
Flagg grew up a Celtics fan in Newport, Maine, making the three-hour drive to TD Garden with his family on school breaks. Friday night he was on the other side of it, starting for the visiting team while hundreds of fans from back home packed the lower bowl. Jerseys from his days at Montverde Academy, Duke and his current No. 32 in Dallas were scattered throughout the building. Marshall showed up to pregame warmups wearing a T-shirt with Flagg’s name on it.
“It was just a shirt,” Marshall said with a shrug. “I just put it on.”
Dallas got a scare in the first quarter when Flagg went down after slipping on his left foot, the same foot he sprained earlier this month in a play that cost him eight games. Kidd called a timeout for the training staff to evaluate him at the bench, running Flagg through a series of exercises before clearing him to return. Flagg did not come back until the 7:29 mark of the second quarter, missing the rest of the first period entirely.
Over two games since returning from the injury, Flagg has shot 14-for-45 from the field — 7-for-22 in Thursday’s 115-114 loss to Orlando, 7-for-23 in Boston. The shot is not back yet, but the rest of his game has been. He had 18 points, six assists and four blocks in Orlando, including three blocks in the fourth quarter after absorbing a pair of hard fouls. Against Boston, he logged six assists and eight rebounds in 30 minutes, staying active as a passer and rebounder even as the looks refused to fall.
“I feel good about the looks I’m getting,” he said. “I’m getting to my spots and taking the shots I want. They’re just not falling right now. It’s about getting my rhythm and touch back, and I’m not worried about it.”
The Tatum connection added another dimension to the night. Flagg attended Tatum’s invitation-only JT Elite camp in high school — a gathering of the top freshman and sophomore prospects in the country — and later followed him to Duke. The two have maintained a relationship since Flagg entered the league, with Tatum offering advice during one of the most scrutinized rookie seasons in recent memory.
“I went to his camp when I was younger and got to see his work ethic up close,” Flagg said. “Learning from that and seeing the things that make him special is something I’ve tried to carry with me.”
After the final buzzer, with the arena still buzzing from Tatum’s return, the two found each other at center court. They embraced, and Tatum leaned in with a few words.
“He’s been a mentor for me throughout my journey from Duke to now,” Flagg said. “He’s someone I’ve been able to talk to and get advice from.”
Despite the loss and the shooting struggles, Flagg did not hesitate when asked if any part of him wished he could experience TD Garden as a Celtic rather than an opponent.
“I love being a Maverick,” he said. “That’s home, and I don’t want anything else. It’s going to be really fun throughout my career to keep coming back here and play in front of this crowd.”
Kidd said he had never seen a reception like the one Flagg received during pregame introductions — not for a visiting player, and especially not in a building as traditionally cold to opponents as TD Garden.
“I’ve never heard a road player get a cheer like that here in Boston,” he said. “Usually it’s the opposite. It shows the appreciation they have for Coop and who he is today and who he can become as his career moves forward.”
Before tipoff, Kidd spoke to reporters about the layered significance of sending his rookie into a building where Flagg once sat in the stands watching the franchise he grew up rooting for.
“We all understand, this is the team he grew up with,” Kidd said. “He’s mentioned Tatum as one of the guys he’s followed. I think it’s great that his family and others get to see him play in person. It’s exciting. Hopefully, he can deliver. This is not an easy team to play against.”
When asked about Flagg’s composure on a night when the shooting simply did not fall, and the foot flared up in the opening minutes, Kidd did not mince words.
“This young man handles the big stage like no one I’ve seen,” he said. “His shooting percentage wasn’t great, but he was aggressive. He had some good looks that didn’t go down, and that happens whether you’re in Boston or in Dallas. He hurt his foot early but came back and kept competing. He’s a tough kid.”
Dallas Mavericks Competitive in First Half Before Boston Celtics Pull Away
Dallas actually outscored Boston 22-21 in the first quarter and led by as many as four points in the second, including a 53-52 advantage with just over a minute left in the half. But Tatum converted a putback tip-in dunk off a Payton Pritchard miss, then hit a stepback three on the very next possession to put Boston ahead 58-53 at the break — a five-point swing in 22 seconds. Boston never trailed again.
The Mavericks briefly reclaimed the lead at 61-60 early in the third quarter before Boston pulled away for good with a 12-3 run that pushed the lead to double digits. Dallas never recovered, getting outscored 62-47 over the final two quarters. The paint disparity was significant — Boston outscored Dallas 52-30 in that area — a number made worse by the fact that Daniel Gafford and Marvin Bagley III both sat out, leaving an already thin frontcourt even thinner against one of the better rebounding teams in the East.
Boston blocked a season-high 10 shots — a reflection of how much trouble Dallas had generating clean looks in the lane, particularly in the third quarter when the game got away from them.
Kidd addressed the second half directly, pointing to missed shots rather than the back-to-back fatigue some might expect from a team on its second consecutive road game.
“We felt like we played pretty well in the first half to only be down five,” Kidd said. “In the second half we were flat. We had some good looks that just didn’t go down and they took advantage of that. They moved the ball well. They’re one of the best teams at passing up a good shot to create another one, and they did that at a high level in the second half.”
Flagg put the blame on himself when it came to the second-half breakdown, pointing specifically to Dallas getting disorganized in its half-court sets and losing the execution edge it had maintained through much of the first half.
“Part of it is on me,” he said. “I wasn’t good enough getting us set up. We’ve just got to help get everybody organized and be smarter about what actions we want to get to.”
Marshall, when pressed on what separates nights when Dallas looks cohesive from nights when it does not, kept his answer grounded in the reality of a team still building chemistry mid-season.
“Just knowing your personnel — knowing who you’re playing with and how they play the game,” he said. “Same story. It’s just going to take time.”
Klay Thompson, Max Christie Lead Bench Effort
With Kyrie Irving and Dereck Lively II already done for the season and Gafford and Bagley unavailable Friday, the Mavericks were forced to use one of Moussa Cisse‘s remaining two-way contract days to patch together a functional frontcourt rotation. Brandon Williams returned from a one-game absence, providing 11 points, seven rebounds, and four assists across 19 minutes. Cisse responded to the opportunity, finishing with six points, seven rebounds, and three blocks in 26 minutes — a performance that stood out against the backdrop of the paint disparity the starters allowed.
Thompson carried his strong play from Thursday’s loss in Orlando into Friday, again giving Dallas its best offensive punch off the bench. He finished with 19 points on 7-for-13 shooting in just 18 minutes, going 5-for-11 from three. After scoring 24 points in Orlando the night before, Thompson has looked like one of the more dependable pieces on this roster down the stretch. He did not hold back when asked about his young teammate.
“Coop is going to be a superstar in this league,” Thompson said. “It’s been a pleasure to be his teammate, and I’ll be excited to tell future generations that I got to play with him in his rookie season.” Christie also shot it well, connecting on four of six three-point attempts in 29 minutes — one of the cleaner offensive performances on a night when Dallas’s starters combined to shoot 2-for-17 from three.
“It shows the character of this group, and Max is part of that,” the Mavericks coach said. “He stayed aggressive. As a shooter you’re going to miss some shots, but for him to keep being aggressive tonight was important for us.”
Marshall, whose 13 points came on efficient shooting in a reserve role, reflected on what Flagg’s homecoming looked like from the bench — the ovation, the Flagg jerseys, the contingent from Maine filling the lower bowl on a Friday night.
“It’s cool to see all his people come out and support him and show love,” he said. “Hopefully he continues to inspire them and people from where he’s from, and it becomes something normal.”
Jayson Tatum’s Return Looms Large for Dallas Mavericks Schedule
Tatum’s debut was far from polished. He missed his first six shots — including an air ball and a wide-open dunk attempt that hit the front iron — and looked uncomfortable with the game speed in his first extended action after nearly 10 months away. But he kept screening, kept hunting offensive rebounds, picked up three assists and two boards before converting a single basket, and eventually found his footing after a putback slam late in the second quarter settled him down.
“It’s been 42 and a half weeks since I played an NBA game,” Tatum said. “I just kind of felt like I was a step off or moving too fast. But the game started to slow down as I just kind of relaxed a little bit.”
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla had seen enough from Tatum in practice and in the lead-up to his return to know the slow start would not define the night, pointing to his activity before his first basket as evidence that the process was intact regardless of what the box score showed.
“When he was 100 percent healthy, he’s missed six shots in a row before,” Mazzulla said. “What I liked is just his approach and he continued to rebound. He competed on the defensive end. I think just the playmaking, the steady balance of the things we need to do to win — I thought he attacked that well tonight.”
Brown, who carried Boston’s offense through the difficult stretches and finished with seven assists of his own, said the night carried a weight that went beyond anything in the box score.
“I commend him being able to put himself on the line a little bit to come back and be a part of something bigger,” he said. “He didn’t have to, and no one put pressure on him, but he wanted to be out there.”
Mazzulla called it a team moment as much as an individual one, noting that Tatum had addressed his teammates the day before in a meeting that set the tone for how the Celtics approached Friday’s game.
“This is an opportunity where we have a chance to come together as a team,” he said. “It’s a celebration for one of our teammates that has gone through a journey.”
From the Dallas side, Kidd watched Boston get Tatum back with 19 games left in the regular season and did not sugarcoat what it means for the rest of the league.
“There’s a lot of emotion in this game on both sides,” he said. “The way the Celtics have been playing without him and now to get a player like that back — it’s March and they have bigger plans than this to get to June. To get a player like this back is only going to make them better.”
The loss came one night after Dallas fell in Orlando, completing the back end of a back-to-back. When asked whether the schedule played a role in the second-half fade, Kidd did not bite.
“No excuses,” he said. “In the NBA, that’s just how the schedule goes sometimes. We had good looks that didn’t fall, and we couldn’t stop them on the other end. I don’t think it was fatigue. Boston is a good team, and we missed shots that we made the night before.”
Dallas’s next stop is Toronto on Sunday, with Atlanta and Memphis still to come before the road trip ends.
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