The Mavericks’ loss to the Timberwolves on Thursday night did more than drop Dallas to 7-5. It put a spotlight on a problem that’s getting harder to brush aside: this team needs another scorer.
Cooper Flagg and Kyrie Irving were held to 22 combined points after putting up 78 in the previous game, and Minnesota made its game plan clear from the opening tip. The Timberwolves loaded up on the two headliners and dared the rest of Dallas to carry the offense. That challenge never really got answered.
The Mavericks’ starting group outside of Flagg and Irving managed only 20 points combined, and Dallas shot 27 percent from deep on 48 attempts. When the Wolves forced the role players to beat them, the supporting cast didn’t come through.
Zaccharie Risacher was one of the few Dallas bright spots, finishing with 22 points on 9-of-14 shooting, plus six rebounds, three assists, two steals and one block. But 15 of those points came after halftime, when the game was already slipping away. And even with that outburst, the bigger picture is still pretty stark: he had scored just 21 points across his previous five games combined.
Dallas has gotten 20-point games from five other players besides Risacher, Flagg and Irving: Sergio De Larrea, Walter Clayton Jr., Daniel Gafford, P.J. Washington and Naji Marshall.
The issue is that none of that production has shown up with any real consistency. Washington is the only one in that group with multiple 20-point games, and he’s also had two games with six points or fewer.
That’s the crux of the problem. The Mavericks have had eight different players reach 20 in a game, which at least hints at some offensive depth.
But they don’t have a dependable third option they can count on night after night. Potential is nice.
Reliability is what this roster is missing.
There are also injuries in the mix, with Sergio De Larrea having played only four games and Dereck Lively II and Tarik Biberovic yet to appear. Even so, none of those absences changes the larger issue: Dallas still doesn’t have a player built to be Dusty May’s steady third piece.
That’s why the trade market looms so large. The Mavericks may have to give up some wing depth or center depth to get a scorer who can ease the load on Flagg and Irving. A third piece like that could lift the ceiling of the roster in a real way.
A dynamic offensive shooting guard or a score-first wing would give Dallas the kind of punch it lacked against Minnesota. One bad night shouldn’t trigger a panic move, but this is the sort of weakness that tends to get exposed again and again as the season wears on.
And against elite defenses, that’s the danger. If the Mavericks don’t add someone who can punish teams for selling out on their stars, they’re going to keep running into the same wall.
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