One more thing.

The Mavs may be tanking now. Anthony Davis may be out for the season. Kyrie may not play. There are still some reasons to play the rest of the season. I'll tell you what they are. Today's Lockdown Mavs. I'm not a doctor, so... I'm saying, it's me versus the machine. I don't know. Sot-num change. Nice, kind thrust to the middle. Hot man, the hot player. Wait, wait. One more thing. Fire it up. Yeah, you're still locked on to the Dallas Mavericks. Your team every day. My name is Nick Engstead. Meadey member covering the maps for over 10 years. It's the one more thing. A bonus episode of Lockdown Maps. We missed the episode with Isaac and I talking about the rumors around Anthony Davis, Daniel Gafford, Clay Thompson, and others. Go listen to that episode wherever you're listening to watching this. But today I want to talk about something that I wanted to challenge myself because the maps are probably taking. The season may not matter. So many people are asking me, like, how's the map season going? Like, people that don't follow the NBA. And I'm just like, you know what? It's not great. Anthony Davis may be out for the year. That means Kyrie may not come back. But there are still reasons to play this season. And so I've got a bunch of them.

I'm going to list a whole bunch of different things that I think are reasons to play the rest of the season, things to watch for, things that I'm going to be watching for throughout the rest of the season. So let's get into it. First one is obviously... Pleasure leads us to the flag, man. Cooper Flag. The development of Cooper Flag is the number one thing for this Maverick season. It has been since the beginning of the season.

It continues to be.

That does not change at all. Maybe the way that they do develop Cooper Flag, maybe that changes. Maybe that is something that we watch out for and we see. All right. What is different when they don't have, you know, a bunch of different role players.

Obviously, you know, guys have been in and out of the lineups all the time.

Lively has barely played. PJ Washington has been in and out. Gafford has been in and out. But if Nashi gets traded, if Gafford gets traded, obviously Anthony Davis out. Like, how does that affect Cooper Flagg's development? and if he is the, you know, the main guy on the team,

like if Anthony Davis doesn't play the rest of the season,

Kyrie doesn't come back, which are, I'll talk about, I'll touch on those two in a minute because those are, those are still hypothetical what-ifs. But if those guys don't come back, then this is Cooper Flagg's team, full stop. Then he takes the reins. And I'm curious to see what a Cooper flag takes the rain's team

looks like. And it may look as rough as, like team success wise as we've seen. But I think that gives

Cooper flag the opportunity to, you know, run some offense with some less stressful situations.

We get to see what he can do. We get to see how he interacts with teammates, how he looks

taking the rain, taking that leadership role. It's his first year. He's 19. He's still playing with a bunch of guys that are a lot older than him, but I think that that is something that I want to see from him. We also definitely want to see his three-point shot round into form. We've seen him as of late start to take more three, start to be more confident in a three point shot.

He's got the wrap off of his thumb.

That's been off for a couple. I definitely want to see his three-point shot round into form. We've seen him as of late start to take more three,

start to be more confident his three-point shot.

He's got the wrap off of his thumb. That's been off for a couple weeks now. And I think that his three-point shot has improved since then. We've seen him hit three-threes in a game, four-threes in a game. And his three-point shot is the number one thing for him going forward on the court that is going to elevate him to all-star superstar level.

He's shooting 28. the number one thing for him going forward on the court that is going to elevate him to

all-star superstar level. He's shooting 28, you know, 0.5% from 3 so far this season. He's

taking 133s in 38 games and that is like 28% is just not good enough. Like that is we don't

defend you from that, from that

spot, you know, percentage. That is, teams will continue to go under, go under screens all the time, or go over, under screens all the time, because we don't respect that shot. And so then, if they start guarding him that way, it changes the amount, the types of shots he can get to. It changes how he can get to his spots on the court.

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