Dallas Mavericks 2025-26 Season Prediction | Can the Mavericks compete for an NBA Title this year?
Spotlight. I’m Haley Sutton. We’ve got Ashley Nicole Moss joining us as well. Uh my co-host Tommy Tran going to tap in in just a little bit, but we’re starting the show of course in hoops where the hottest ticket right now in Las Vegas is to watch summer league ball. We’ll talk more about that in a minute, but uh what have you thought of summer league? Are you paying 650 to go watch? I’m not paying 650. I’m paying 650 to watch one team and one team only. And they go by the name of the New York Knicks. That is crazy. That is so egregiously disrespectful. It’s ridiculous. It’s truly ridiculous. All right, we’re going to talk about the Knicks in a minute, but first, let’s talk about the guys in action tonight. The Vegas Summer League tipping off later tonight, and of course, it’s the backdrop for the number one overall pick set to make his pro debut. Cooper Flag rocking that number 32. He’s going to face off with the Lakers and Bronny James tonight at 8:00 Eastern. And yes, tickets are going for about $200 right now. average. You can get them for as low as 85 bucks, as high as 2500 if you want to sit courtside. Um, so there’s a lot of things going on right now in Las Vegas. But of course, it all comes just two weeks after Flag became the second youngest player to be taken number one overall. Just eight days younger than LeBron James was when Cleveland took him back in 2003. Of course, Flag has been called a generational talent, a future Hall of Famer by so many. And of course, that journey begins tonight in Las Vegas. So, let’s talk about it. We’ve got Ashley Nicole Moss and we’ve got our NBA and betting analyst Tim Doyle joining us as we take our eye to my Dallas Mavericks. An exciting start to the show today. Of course, we know when we’re talking Dallas, it all starts with Cooper Flag. And guys, it’s interesting. Jason Kid has a lot of big plans for Cooper Flag. He’s talked a lot about wanting him to be a point guard, making him uncomfortable as he makes this transition. Ashley, when you watch him take the court tonight, I know it’s a very small sample size, and we want to preface this by saying it is summer league, okay? But when you look at the expectations for the number one overall pick, how do you anticipate them going tonight? Um, look, I think you just want to see Cooper’s trajectory from where he left off in college to the professional league and and you teed it up perfectly. It is summer league and I think that a lot of people put too much emphasis on summer league. I remember in WBY’s debut, it wasn’t the most stellar performance. There were way too early uh tweets that people wish they could probably take back or commentary that they wish they could take back calling him a bust. Will he make the transition? It’s one game and ultimately we know what WMBBY has become and what he’ll continue to become. So the same’s going to be said for Cooper Flag. I do think you’ll get a little bit of a better performance from him than we did WBY. WBY was making that transition from the European game to the American game, which is a huge difference. But when you talk about Cooper, I think he is the most NBA ready of all of the draft D’s, at least in the top 10. Um, and I think that you’re going to see him continue the trajectory that we saw him in college. Obviously, we know what Duke does, what type of talent they produce. And I think that there is a reason that this guy when he was on uh in Vegas a year ago and he was given buckets to Team USA, everyone was like, “Oh, he’s going to be a problem.” You just want to see him continue to build on that. You don’t want to see him regress. But even if he doesn’t have this most stellar, incredible, inspirational stat line, Cooper Flag is just going to be okay. He’s going to be fine. Glad to hear it. Yeah. I think the buzz you talked about with Wemby is the same with Cooper. I think it’s the same as it was with Zion. Heck, I’m old enough, ladies, to remember when LeBron played his first game in the summer league. And that was before social media and no one really followed summer league like they do right now. I think things that I’m looking for is his jump shot to keep improving. You know, I remember when LeBron came into the league, everyone was like, “Yeah, he can’t shoot.” uh he’s made over 2500 three-pointers in his career. And the same thing is being said about Cooper Flag, who last year at Duke shot 38% from three. And against the best defense in college basketball, Houston, went three of four from three and had 27 points in a game that Duke just wasn’t able to close out or else they might have won a national championship. So, the hype is real. It’s awesome to see him out there. I’m just curious, Haley, Ashley, I don’t know how many games he’s going to play this summer. I think maybe three or four max. Yeah. And he mentions LeBron. Mind you, LeBron only had 14 points in his summer league debut. And I think LeBron turned out to be just, you know, just fine. Just want to put that out there. Tim, I was going to tell you that uh LeBron James was drafted in 2003. Uh and I believe Ashley and I are around the same age. I was in the third grade when that happened. Uh so I know you talked about uh where you were. I was in class in the third grade. So we move along. Uh as we know though, uh in all seriousness, this is a guy who Dallas has really embraced. We’ve been through a lot with this team, the Mavericks, after they traded away Luca and now we get Cooper. I still I feel like it hasn’t settled in for a lot of fans, and I feel like it won’t, Tim, until we see him really make his first professional debut that’s not in the summer league. I know it’s early, uh, but I want to look big picture here. When you think about what a year for Cooper Flag and his rookie season looks like, what is success for him? What are those expectations in year one? Well, if you haven’t seen Cooper Flag play, he’s a guy that could do a little bit of everything. He’s not necessarily a big time elite level scorer where I don’t think he’s going to average 20 points a game. I think he’s going to be below that mark in the NBA. And if I had to go out and range, I would say he averages 16 points a game, but he goes out there and grabs eight rebounds. He’s going to average four assists. I think his stats that were shown here last season at Duke where he ranked first in obviously all these categories. I think they’re going to be like eerily similar Ashley to what we expect with the Mavericks because we got the Kyrie Irving situation where it sounds like he’s not going to play next year or it’s a long shot. Anthony Davis once again is recovering from some sort of injury with the eye and now you got Cooper Flag on a roster with you know this is not a championship caliber team I believe on the floor. On paper, this team’s really good and it might be next year that we see them all healthy. But as far as expectations, look at those Duke stats. I think they’re going to mirror in the NBA. Yeah, I agree with everything Tim said, and I think that’s the biggest thing is everyone keeping their expectations for Cooper flag, but specifically what Cooper is going to do for this Dallas Mavericks team this upcoming season at a level. And he’s not going to come in just like Webby didn’t come in. And I’m making that comparison because they’re very much on the same level of just star power even in their rookie seasons. He’s not going to come in and turn the Dallas Mavericks into a championship team. They’re not bringing a trophy to Dallas. But what it is going to what we’re looking for is the potential of that ultimately being the case once again. And that’s what you want to see. You want to see everything that he did at Duke and you want to see Jason Kidd and the Dallas Mavericks being able to build upon that. him being able to make the transition from the collegiate game to the professional game smoothly. Obviously, you want a healthy season, but for everyone thinking that he’s going to come in and put the cape on and save the Dallas Mavericks, that’s not going to happen. it is going to be a an incline, but I do think this I think it’s going to be a quicker incline and a quicker push in that direction than I think maybe we have seen with other drafties because I do think the Dallas Mavericks to Tim’s point on paper given health are in a great situation to be a real threat in the Western Conference. I just think with everything that is stacked against them this upcoming season, Kyrie’s probably not going to return or at least he’s not going to rush back. Anthony Davis is always a wild card. You do have some aging guys on the team and you don’t know what version you’re gonna get, but Cooper Flag, if he can continue to just develop, this team’s in a great position in a few seasons. She’s talking to me, of course, because I’m the Micks fan, so she’s talking me off a ledge here. Um, it’s obvious though that Jason Kid, guys, is trying to find who is going to be the point guard because their current starting one is still dealing with injury. Of course, Kyrie Irving. Um, a lot of people have been optimistic about a 2026 return. I know Kyrie’s kind of talked about it. Uh, but it’s interesting, guys. Uh, we have a quote from him on his live stream earlier this week where he talked about that return. And here’s what he had to say. Quote, “It doesn’t mean I won’t be back. It’s just I don’t want to make any predictions on when I’m going to be back. I just want to be back 150,000% better. So, I’m taking my time right now to really get healthy. I’m taking time to really get my body right, other portions of my body right, and really just enjoy the recovery process. So, I know both of you guys have kind of talked about this return uh to play for Kyrie Irving. Tim, are you I guess surprised to hear that Kyrie is being a little bit cautious about this or is this just kind of the expectation of a guy that’s in this portion of his career? Well, let’s look at him from what he has seen from a guy like Tyrese Hallebertton. That plays a role, right? Tyrese Hallebertton. Now, I was granted it was the NBA finals. I think we all respect that he strapped up and tried to go out there and play successfully in game six and obviously not so much in game seven. But I think athletes, football, basketball, baseball, they’re all going to be looking at a little bit of minor injuries and being like, maybe I should take a little bit more extra time in order to come back and play. Uh once, you know, the brain is an amazing thing. So, if you start telling yourself, I’m not going to be able to come back. If I had to put money on him, actually, I say he doesn’t come back next year. Yeah, I think that’s a great point, too, because the mental aspect of recovery, we know that’s very important to Kyrie as well. So, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see when he comes back. The OGs right now in this team, though, guys, are just down bad. We got Kyrie Irving, not confident that he’s going to return in 2026. You’ve got Anthony Davis having eye surgery earlier this week. Um, I know Ashley that he is expected to make a full recovery, but like when does it end with Anthony Davis? When can we finally just get the healthy AD that we traded for? I don’t think you’ll ever get the healthy AD, unfortunately, because I just think there are some guys to no fault of their own are just prone to injury. And that could be big injuries, that could be small injuries. It seems with Anthony Davis, although he has had spurts in his career where he has played most of the NBA season and has been relatively healthy, it seems that those are the anomalies compared to what we expect with Anthony Davis. And that is for as exceptional as he is, he is going to miss some time. And whenever you have a team with Anthony Davis, you have to prepare for that. It’s like hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. And that cannot be more true than it is with Anthony Davis. So again, this is not going to be something that keeps him out of training camp, preseason, uh, and the regular season. But I think that the smart thing to do with a player like Anthony Davis is you always have a plan B. You always have an option if he does miss time because more than likely, no knock to him. Again, I think he’s a phenomenal player. We all know DPO candidate multiple times in his career, but unfortunately there are just some guys who are played by injury and Anthony Davis is just one of them. And he plays in Dallas. Love that. All right, let’s get to some season predictions. Both of you guys have noted that this team is not there yet. So Tim, I come to you first here. How far do you see them going? Yeah, I think they make the playing game. So more than 40 wins, somewhere in the 45 range win mark. But Haley, relax. All right, this is the best case scenario. Let hear me out, okay? I’m going to play your therapist. Put Haley on. I want to see her. Um, with all the injuries, this is going to be a perfect kind of platter for Cooper Flag to do his thing, grow, make mistakes because Kyrie’s not going to be there. AD’s going to miss time. Like, he’s going to be the guy from the jump. So, there’s going to be some bumps in the road, but wait, wait until next year. Now, all of a sudden, he’s grown an extra year. You got Kyrie coming back healthy, then Anthony Davis, put some other pieces in place. Like, next year, I think Dallas could win the NBA championship. So, it’s almost like two steps back, but you let Cooper develop because Cooper flag, I have not said this, and I want to say this, will be the face of the NBA, not the Mavericks, the face of the NBA. It’s not going to happen this year. It may happen in three to four years, but he is the next Larry Bird. I got a chance to host a high school game featuring him and let VJ Edge come. And after the game, I went to Turner and I was working for the NBA All-Star game there. And I told Shaq and Charles Barkley and all the guys in the green room, he will be a Hall of Famer. And they laughed and laughed at me. They said, “You’re only saying that because he’s white.” I go, “That’s No, I’m not. I’m not saying that.” Go, “This guy is really, really special. He’s that special of a talent. He’s the next face of the NBA.” Um, okay. Okay. I wrote that down on the list of compliments actually that uh uh Tim has given Cooper flag. I’ve got generational talent, future Hall of Famer, and now future face of the NBA. You have to add this to the list of so Cooper flag, Larry Bird, Ace Bailey apparently is Tracy McGrady. Uh Tim is is handing him out, balling it out right now for uh compliments. But look, I I agree with him completely. I think this is a playin team. To his point, I think that’s phenomenal for Cooper Flags development. It gives him the uh experience of playing in a playofflike environment without having the pressure of actually having to advance through multiple series. I look at the future of the Western Conference and off the top of my head right now, I wrote this down as Thunder, Rockets, Nuggets, Clippers, Warriors, Grizzlies are probably my playoff teams and then everybody else is going to fall in that playin scenario. I think the Dallas Mavericks are there, but to Tim’s point, all great points. Um, that’s great for this Dallas Mavericks team because I don’t think they’re there just yet because of all once again the things stacked against them, but I think that’s going to be so beneficial for the development of Cooper Flag. And then the following season, that’s a playoff team. Cowboys are on the up and up. The Mavericks are going to win the championship potentially next year. I’m going to be insufferable in 2025. Guys, appreciate the time. Stick around. We’re going to chat a little bit more as you take a look here at the notable summer league games coming up. Of course, Cooper Flag set to make that pro debut tonight 8:00 Eastern against Bronny James and the Lakers. We’ve also got the number two overall pick, Dylan Harper, in the mix tonight, 10:00 Eastern against the 76ers.
Ashley Nicole-Moss and Tim Doyle join CBS Sports HQ Spotlight to preview the 2025-26 season for the Dallas Mavericks.
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