The NBA went to Macao and Houston treated it like a statement game. The Rockets beat Dallas 135-117, led 65-45 at halftime, and never let the Mavericks in front at any point.
The result does not count. The thing worth watching does. Fred VanVleet played his first game since the torn ACL that erased his last season, and he scored 17 points with seven assists on 5-of-12 shooting from three.
VanVleet Shot It Like Nothing Happened
Twelve three-point attempts from a guard a year removed from reconstructive knee surgery is the tell. Players coming back from an ACL usually hesitate, settle, and keep their feet quiet for a few weeks. VanVleet came out firing.
“But happy to be back,” he said. Short answer, and the shot chart said more than the quote.
Houston needs this version of him. Kevin Durant scored 15 on 7-of-12 in about 23 minutes and does not need to be the engine every night, which only works if the guards can create and space the floor. VanVleet doing that changes what this roster can be.
Tari Eason came off the bench for 20 points and nine rebounds, and Reed Sheppard added 16 with four threes. That is depth Houston did not have two years ago.
Cooper Flagg Was the Best Part of a Dallas Loss
Flagg scored 19 points on 7-of-14 in 19 minutes, with six rebounds and three assists, and 17 of those points came in the second quarter alone. He sat the entire second half.
A 17-point quarter in the NBA, even in preseason, is a real thing. Flagg is the center of everything Dallas is building, and a scoring burst like that against a playoff team is the kind of sequence that justifies the hype.
Mavericks coach Dusty May was measured afterward. “There’s a lot to clean up, but there’s also some bright spots from this one,” he said. Both halves of that are true.
Kyrie Irving Still Has Not Played
Irving sat for rest, with his left knee cited. He has not played since tearing his left ACL on March 3, 2025, and May says he will appear in one of the two Macao games. The rematch is Sunday at 6 a.m. ET.
Durant, who has seen plenty of Irving up close, kept it simple: “He’s just a savant.”
Dallas does not need Irving in October. It needs him in April, which is why he watched a game his team lost by 18 and nobody in that organization should be bothered by it.
The broader takeaway from Macao is that Houston looks deeper than it did a season ago and Dallas looks like a team still assembling itself. Both of those things were true before tip-off, and an 18-point exhibition result does not change either one.
What did change is that Houston now knows VanVleet can shoot from distance without hesitation. That was the one real question hanging over this roster, and one game answered it in the best way available.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.