Dallas spent last season living on the edge and coming up short far too often. The Mavericks were in the fight more than their 26 wins made it look, but they kept leaving games on the table in the final minutes. Kyrie Irving gives them the kind of finisher that can change that story fast.
The numbers tell the whole tale. Dallas tied for the league lead with 45 clutch games in 2025-26, with clutch defined as contests within five points in the final five minutes.
The Mavericks went 17-28 in those games. That’s a lot of tight basketball, and a lot of nights that slipped away at the end.
For a team that lost 56 games, that level of competitiveness is at least something to build on. Dallas was not getting buried every night.
It was hanging around, putting itself in position, then failing to close. That’s a different problem - and one that can be fixed.
A big reason the closing issues showed up is pretty clear. The Mavericks leaned on one of the league’s youngest rosters and asked that group to handle high-leverage possessions without the player whose entire career has been built around making shots in those moments.
Cooper Flagg was a teenager learning as he went. The rest of the supporting cast around him had never really been put in that spot before.
In the last five minutes, experience is currency, and Dallas was short on it.
Irving changes the equation right away.
His late-game résumé is as good as it gets among active players. He buried the Game 7 winner over Stephen Curry to deliver the 2016 Finals to Cleveland, a shot that still lives in highlight packages everywhere.
He also beat Denver in 2024 with a left-handed floater from the free-throw line that had no business going in. In postseason closeout games, he owns a 15-1 record and has averaged 23.5 points.
The Mavericks have already seen what that can look like in Dallas. During the 2023-24 season, they went 16-4 in clutch games, one of the best marks in the league. Irving finished among the NBA’s top 10 in clutch scoring at 4.2 points per game, while shooting 60% from the field and 42% from 3-point range in those situations.
That’s the real value of a closer. Late possessions usually turn into isolation battles against a set defense, and only a small group of players can consistently create something clean there.
Irving is one of them. He also forces enough defensive attention to open things up for everyone else, which matters even more for a roster packed with young players who need the game simplified.
There’s another layer here, too. Those clutch losses from last season weren’t empty reps.
Flagg and the rest of the young core spent a full year in pressure-packed moments, even if the results didn’t go their way. That kind of experience sticks.
Now Dallas gets to pair it with a veteran who knows exactly how to finish.
The Mavericks don’t have to become a dominant team to make a real jump. They just need to start cashing in on the close games they were already playing. After a season full of tight finishes, even a modest improvement there can swing the win total in a big way.
In Other News...
Mavericks Fans Have Every Reason To Reject This Bleak Future Outlook
Dallas has spent the offseason building around a very different-looking young core, adding Morez Johnson Jr. and Sergio De Larrea through the draft while also bringing in Santi Aldama, Marcus Sasser and Zaccharie Risacher in trades. For a franchise trying to reset its timeline without losing sight of the present, those moves at least give the roster more avenues to grow, and they help explain why some around the league see more upside here than a simple midtier projection would suggest.
The optimism starts with the names already on hand and the belief that the group can mature together, especially if health and development break the right way. Kyrie Irving remains a central figure, Dereck Lively II is viewed as a key piece in the frontcourt and Cooper Flagg adds another layer of intrigue to the long view, leaving the Mavericks with a future that feels far less settled than outside evaluations would imply. [Read more 🡒]
Santi Aldama Gives Dallas A Frontcourt Wrinkle Fans Will Notice Fast
Santi Aldama gives the Mavericks a different kind of look in the frontcourt, one that is easy to spot even before he settles in. At 7 feet, he is not just a spacer on the perimeter, but a player who can stretch defenses with his shooting and move the ball well enough to keep an offense flowing from multiple spots on the floor.
Last season offered the blueprint for why Dallas sees him as more than a simple floor stretcher. Aldama took a varied shot diet, got into the paint with real purpose, and showed enough feel as a playmaker to make defenses pay when they overreacted. The broader question now is how quickly that blend of size, touch and decision-making translates into the kind of lineup wrinkle the Mavericks can actually lean on. [Read more 🡒]
Mavericks Fans May Be Missing What Makes Morez Johnson Jr. Matter
Morez Johnson Jr. arrived with enough draft pedigree to get immediate attention, but the early read on his game in Summer League suggested the Mavericks may have landed something a little more layered than a quick scoring fix. The rookie showed the kind of defensive activity, physicality and extra-effort play that tends to translate well once the games start counting, even if his offense still looks like work in progress.
For Dallas, the important part may be resisting the urge to judge him by points alone in his first season. Players who carve out value with hustle, switching and toughness can earn minutes long before the shot comes around, and Johnson Jr. already looks like the sort of young piece whose impact could grow in ways that do not show up right away on the box score. [Read more 🡒]