Daniel Gafford and Zaccharie Risacher each scored two points, an awkward four-point total for two Dallas starters in a 112-111 loss to San Antonio. That number deserves criticism. It does not deserve to become the entire verdict.
Gafford and Risacher also combined for three assists, two steals and two blocks. Gafford added four rebounds in 18 minutes, while Risacher had one rebound in the same playing time. Dallas needed more than four points from them, especially in a game that became a one-point finish, but both players supplied defensive activity and connective passing while the scoring load shifted elsewhere.
Gafford’s offensive contribution was brief and vivid. With San Antonio leading 48-36 in the second quarter, Naji Marshall found him cutting for a dunk during a 12-1 Dallas run that pulled the Mavericks within one. Gafford finished with two blocks.
Those plays did not transform his 1-for-6 shooting line, and one assist does not compensate for five missed field-goal attempts, but they explain why his night cannot be reduced to two points.
Risacher’s line was quieter: 1-for-4 shooting, 0-for-2 from three-point range, two assists and a steal. There was no scoring burst to ease the work facing Dallas’s principal creators. That is the fair criticism.
The fair defense is that he did not turn the ball over repeatedly or disappear from every other part of the game. His two assists helped keep possessions connected, even as his own attempts failed to fall.
The Mavericks needed that modest production to be supplemented, and their reserves supplied far more than modest production. Dallas’s bench scored 38 points to San Antonio’s 10, with Marshall, Morez Johnson Jr. and Walter Clayton Jr. accounting for all 38.
That advantage did not merely decorate the box score; it repaired a game Dallas trailed by 19 and helped produce a fourth quarter the Mavericks won 31-22.
Marshall gave Dallas the scoring volume those two starters could not supply. He made nine of twelve shots for 22 points, including all three attempts from distance. Thirteen points came in the fourth.
With 8:17 left he had reduced the gap to two, and his pullup at 7:03 kept Dallas within reach. This was efficient relief from a reserve, rather than a case of the whole rotation sharing the same shooting problem.
Cooper Flagg assisted on four of Marshall’s baskets, including the fourth-quarter threes at 9:46, 8:17 and 1:41. The last of those tied the game 111-111 after Victor Wembanyama had extended San Antonio’s lead with a tip-in at 1:47. Marshall then blocked De’Aaron Fox’s shot and collected the rebound at 1:29.
