Minnesota keeps winning the games Anthony Edwards was supposed to carry. Dallas keeps handing its season to a 19-year-old. On Thursday night at Target Center those two sentences meet: the Mavericks (7-4, three straight wins) open a three-game road trip against the Timberwolves (8-3), who have won four in a row and five of seven since Edwards went in for knee surgery — and who now get the version of Cooper Flagg who just scored 43 points in one night.
Start with the strange part. Edwards averaged 33.3 points in the four games he played, opened the season with a franchise-record 45, and has not played since the arthroscopic cleanup on his right knee on October 29. The Wolves shrugged. LaMelo Ball, who arrived in the July trade with Charlotte to be Edwards's backcourt partner, leads the team at 18.3 points a night. Ayo Dosunmu, starting in Edwards's spot, is at 18.1. Jaden McDaniels is at 17.0, and Rudy Gobert leads them on the glass at 12.1 rebounds a game. Add the scoring up and the committee is real: Ball has 201 points this season, Dosunmu 199, McDaniels 187 — three players within 14 points of each other, and none of them is the franchise player.
The defense is the loudest number. Minnesota allows 105.1 points per 100 possessions, the best mark in the league, and its plus-11.1 net rating is second. Sunday against Utah, the Jazz had the game tied 63-63 in the third quarter; the Wolves outscored them 27-15 over the last 7:23 of the period and won 115-100. Dosunmu scored 26 on 13 shots, Ball added 24, and Gobert pulled 15 rebounds without missing from the field. Ball hung a season-high 34 on Milwaukee during this run, and Dosunmu has 92 points in four November games on better than 50 percent shooting. “Ayo is a track star,” Ball said this week. “He definitely gets out and runs, and I love people who get out and run. He's easy to play with.”
The Wolves remade themselves smaller and meaner over the summer — Julius Randle and Naz Reid out, Ball and Jonathan Kuminga in — and the word their own coverage keeps landing on is pests. It fits a team winning on pressure and depth while its best player watches in a knee brace. Dallas coach Dusty May used the scouting version of the same compliment on Wednesday: “Ayo Dosunmu's been really good. LaMelo's been very good.”
The 43-Point Problem
Then there is the visitor. Flagg's Monday night in Dallas started as a problem — Indiana led by 13 late in the first half — and ended as a record. He scored 30 of his 43 points after halftime and hit two 18-foot pull-ups in the final 62 seconds, the second of them over Pascal Siakam to reach 41, and Dallas escaped 125-122. The full line: 43 points on 16-of-25 shooting, 10 rebounds, six assists and three steals. It made him the second teenager in league history with a 40-point, 10-rebound, five-assist game. Kevin Durant did it for Seattle in the last game of the 2007-08 season. Nobody else has.
It was Flagg's fifth 40-point game before turning 20, the most any teenager has managed, and he was not carrying Dallas alone. Kyrie Irving scored 35 with seven three-pointers, and the pair combined for 78 of the Mavericks' 125 points on 27-of-43 shooting. Dallas has won three straight, and May confirmed on Wednesday that everybody who played Monday is available for Thursday, the first stop on a trip that continues in Cleveland on Saturday and Boston on Sunday.
Where Thursday Is Decided
The first assignment belongs to McDaniels, Minnesota's best perimeter defender, who is also playing the best offensive basketball of his career on the committee's third chair. Behind him is Gobert, and behind Gobert is the league's best defense. Flagg's counter is that he does not need one matchup to go his way: on Monday he scored on pull-ups, in transition and at the line, where he went 8-for-8. And Dallas brings a second question Minnesota has to answer — Irving, who has spent a decade ruining good defensive game plans, plus a frontcourt in Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington (14.6 points and a team-high 7.6 rebounds a night, and the man who found Gafford for the transition and-one that stretched Monday's lead late) that will pull Gobert away from the rim.
Put the two attacks side by side and the contrast is the game. Dallas's top two scored 78 points on Monday. Minnesota's top three have scored 587 points all season, spread so evenly that Utah spent Sunday night solving one Wolf and getting beaten by another. One team brings a star in the middle of the best month of his young life. The other brings a rotation that has not needed its star in two weeks.
Edwards will watch this one too. He was back in the building for Sunday's Utah game and at practice on Tuesday on crutches, still wearing a brace, and the word from the room was good — Jon Krawczynski, who covers the team for The Athletic, reported the rehab is going great in its early stages. The expectation remains a return in late December at the earliest, and Donte DiVincenzo is still out with the Achilles injury from last spring's playoffs. The homestand is a franchise-record eight games at Target Center, running to the day before Thanksgiving. At 8-3 with the league's best defense, Minnesota is in no rush to get anybody back. Thursday gets to measure how far the no-rush plan stretches.
Sources · 7 sources
- ESPN — Dallas Mavericks at Minnesota Timberwolves, Thursday November 12, 2026 (event 401909978, scheduled 01:00Z November 13); box score and play-by-play, Indiana Pacers at Dallas Mavericks, November 9, 2026 (event 401909956)
- Field Level Media — “'Pests' at their core, Timberwolves set to face Mavericks” — the Thursday preview with the season averages for Ball, Dosunmu, McDaniels, Gobert, Irving and Washington (November 11, 2026)
- Associated Press — “Dosunmu, Ball lead Timberwolves past slumping Jazz, 115-100” (November 8, 2026) and “Ayo Dosunmu is helping keep the Timberwolves on track while Anthony Edwards recovers” (November 11, 2026)
- The Athletic via Yardbarker — Jon Krawczynski's Anthony Edwards rehab updates — crutches at practice Tuesday, rehab progressing, return late December at the earliest (November 10-11, 2026); Dusty May's Wednesday practice report (November 11, 2026)
- Pioneer Press — Jace Frederick, “Timberwolves taking care of business amid soft early schedule” — league-best 105.1 defensive rating, plus-11.1 net rating (November 10, 2026)
- Dallas Sports Journal — “Mavericks Beat Pacers 125-122 As Cooper Flagg Scores 43” and the Flagg mid-range explainer — 30 second-half points, the two 18-foot pull-ups in the final 62 seconds (November 10, 2026)
- NBA / Dallas Mavericks — Official YouTube highlights: Jazz at Timberwolves, November 8, 2026, and Flagg's 43-point game against Indiana, November 9, 2026 (both oEmbed-verified)
Season totals for Ball (201), Dosunmu (199) and McDaniels (187) are the Sportradar team leader lines through November 8, cross-checked against the Field Level Media averages.
Tip is 7 p.m. Central on Thursday at Target Center, on NBA TV. Every possession — box score, play-by-play and live updates — is in the Game Center for Dallas at Minnesota. Sunday's win is in our Dosunmu wrap, Monday's 43 is in the Flagg story, and the NBA hub and Stats Hub carry the season from here.
