Mavericks hand the Rockets their first loss, 116-111

The last two minutes

The game turned on a jumper with about two minutes left. Kyrie Irving's shot put Dallas ahead for good at 102-100 and set up the tense finish that followed.

Houston had chances to answer from the line and did not take them. Kevin Durant, a career 88 percent free throw shooter, missed a pair with the Rockets trailing by two with 1:53 remaining.

Amen Thompson did the same thing with 42 seconds to go. Houston finished 24 of 33 from the free throw line, and four of those misses arrived in the two minutes that decided the game.

The final was 116-111, and it was the first loss of the season for a team that had started with a five-game winning streak.

What made the finish strange is how little Houston had to do to avoid it. Two made free throws on either possession and the last two minutes look completely different.

The possession before Irving's jumper is the one Dallas will want to keep. It was not a set play so much as a decision to stop running anything complicated and let a veteran find his own shot.

Irving's second half

Irving's line was 33 points on 12 of 19 from the field, including 5 of 8 from 3-point range. Twenty-six of those points came after halftime.

That distribution is the story of the night. Dallas spent the first half finding out whether it could stay close, then handed the ball to a guard who has spent a decade deciding games.

He also made the shot that separated the teams for good. A jumper at 102-100 is not a highlight, but it is the only lead change that mattered.

Dallas has spent the opening week asking Irving to be a scorer first and a playmaker second, and the arrangement is working. The ball finds him in the fourth quarter, and he does not give it back.

Houston tried three different defenders on him in the second half and none of them changed the result. That is what a 33-point night looks like when the points are spread across a half rather than a quarter.

Flagg at the other end

Cooper Flagg finished 13 of 19 from the field and got Dallas off to the right start with 10 points on 5-of-5 shooting halfway through the first quarter.

The important part came later. After each pair of Houston misses at the line, Flagg converted at the other end, including a three-point play.

For a rookie in a game with this much late-game noise, that is the detail worth keeping: he was the player Dallas trusted with the possessions that followed a Houston mistake.

It is worth remembering that Flagg is doing this while learning where the help defenders come from at this level. The late buckets were the visible part; the cuts that created them were the work.

What Houston lost besides a game

The Rockets' unbeaten start was not a fluke of schedule. They were winning with size and defensive pressure, and both were present in stretches here.

But the free throw line is where unbeaten starts end. Houston shot 24 of 33, and Dallas needed every one of those misses.

With the loss, idle Memphis is now the only remaining unbeaten team in the league, which is a sentence nobody expected to write this early.

Houston's coaching staff will look at the film and see a team that controlled most of the game and lost it at the line. That is a better problem than the alternative, and a harder one to fix in a week.

The Rockets also lost the rebounding battle in the fourth quarter, which is the quiet way a close game gets away from a bigger team.

The Cup context

This was group play on the first night of the NBA Cup, and the margin matters for tiebreakers later in November.

Dallas needed a game like this for a different reason: the offense had leaned on Flagg's energy and Irving's shot-making without much margin for error.

The Mavericks now have a win that will look good in the standings and in the group table, which is two different kinds of useful.

For the Rockets, the group table now has a loss in it. For Dallas, the table has a win that could matter more in November than it does tonight.

What to watch

Three things. First, Houston's free throw shooting as a trend: one bad night at the line is noise, a second in a week is a problem.

Second, how defenses cover Flagg late. He was trusted with the ball in the last two minutes, and that will change how teams defend him.

Third, Irving's workload. Twenty-six second-half points is a lot to ask of a guard who has had his own injury history, and Dallas has a long season ahead.

Fourth, the group tiebreakers. In the Cup, point differential matters, and a five-point win is not the same as a blowout when November arrives.

Fifth, Dallas' rotation. A 33-point night from Irving covers a lot, and the question is how much of that the team wants to need.