The Dallas Mavericks finished their 2026 NBA Summer League schedule Friday with a 110-88 win over the New York Knicks in Las Vegas, closing the exhibition slate at 3-2 after entering the night even at 2-2.
Dallas made 18 three-pointers and had five players score at least 15 points. The game turned in the third quarter, when the Mavericks outscored New York 35-19 to build a lead the Knicks never seriously threatened in the fourth. It was a distribution of scoring rather than a single takeover performance, which is close to the point of a summer roster whose headline names were already gone.
Sergio de Larrea, the 25th overall pick in June’s draft, sat out the finale after handing out 14 assists against Oklahoma City on Thursday. Cooper Flagg had been shut down earlier in the week after a 31-point second game. By Friday the roster was mostly two-way candidates and camp invitees, and they shot the ball well enough to win comfortably.
The useful takeaway from a five-game July sample is narrow, and it is worth saying plainly: de Larrea’s 14-assist night is the piece that carries into September. Dallas spent the 25th pick on a 20-year-old Spanish guard who needs to prove he can organize an NBA offense, and a game that produces 14 assists against real NBA-adjacent defenders is evidence in that direction. Joe Boylan, the veteran assistant who joined Dusty May’s staff and ran the summer team, now hands the group back to the main staff.
What Dallas actually owes the reader is the follow-through. The front office spent this offseason converting depth into optionality — the Santi Aldama trade, the Tarik Biberovic agreement, the still-unresolved Klay Thompson situation. Summer League does not settle any of that. Training camp in late September is where the rotation questions behind Flagg get answered.
For fantasy purposes, Summer League results carry almost no redraft weight here. De Larrea is a dynasty-only name in deep leagues — a 2026 first-rounder with playmaking flashes but no clear path to minutes on a roster that still has veteran guards ahead of him. Flagg is the only Mavericks rookie worth a standard-league draft pick, and his stock did not move this week. Revisit the backup guard picture after camp.
