The struggle bus will be parked outside American Airlines Center on Friday as the Dallas Mavericks (24-52) host the Orlando Magic (40-36) and both teams limp toward the end of the 2025-26 NBA season. We get through this one, and there are only five more of these things to go. You can do this, Mavs fans.
Hopefully you’ve found something better to do with your Friday night than watch this team play something like basketball, but if you’re still interested, we’ll be there for you with all manner of half-assed game insights and postgame commentary, because we’re completionists if nothing else.
Here are three nuggets to chew on as we prepare for the fresh hell that surely awaits on Friday.
Last time out
Friday’s game is the second and final meeting between the Mavs and the Magic this year. Dallas dropped a baffling 115-114 loss to Orlando on March 5 on a last-second dunk by Wendell Carter Jr. Jalen Suggs hit four 3-pointers for the Magic in that game, including one on the possession before Carter’s decisive jam, in response to Cooper Flagg’s three-point play on the other end that gave the Mavs a 114-110 lead with 38 seconds left.
That game was Flagg’s first after missing nine games with a sprained foot. Flagg scored 18 points and dished six assists on a bad 7-for-22 shooting night, which has become the norm for the rookie lately. Flagg has hit a challenging stretch where he’s had good production, but with a tendency toward inefficiency, caused to some extent by a combination of his rookie-year whistle and the dearth of talent around him on the offensive end.
No one on the Magic roster did much of anything to will the team to the win over the Mavericks. Dallas just crumbled in the third and fourth quarters, as they have many times this year. Tiago da Silva was Orlando’s leading scorer in that game, with all of 19 points.
Freefallin’
The Mavericks’ situation is well documented. Ethical tankers. In the hunt for a pick near the top of the 2026 NBA Draft. Not all that worried about winning, to put it mildly.
The last time these two teams met, on March 5, the Magic were in the middle of a 13-4 stretch, which would run their win-loss record all the way up to 38-28 by March 14. Since then, Orlando has lost eight of 10 games. It’s no coincidence that the Magic started losing soon after guard Anthony Black went down with an abdominal strain. He’s missed the team’s last 14 games, and the duo of Paolo Banchero and Desmond Bane has had a tough time keeping the thing together without him. Orlando sits in ninth place in the Eastern Conference as of the start of Friday’s game, still clinging to their play-in positioning. Black has been ruled out of Friday’s game as of Thursday afternoon.
So, don’t count your losses before they hatch, Mavericks fans. Sprinkled in with some losses to good teams throughout the Magic’s last 10 games was a loss to the putrid Indiana Pacers on March 23.
Winnable games remaining
With six games left in the 2025-26 season, Friday’s matchup with the Magic appears to be one of just two winnable games left on the Mavericks’ slate. If your eyes are already on the hefty haul of guards in the upcoming 2026 NBA Draft, you’d love for the Mavericks to find a way to gracefully bow out at some point against Orlando.
The Magic have the firepower to do away with the Mavs, sure. But you never know what version of Orlando you’re going to see on any given night. The Magic, much like the Mavs, have a proven ability to lose any kind of game: high-scoring up-and-down affairs as well as the dreaded and plodding race to 100 points.
They should lose the next four, at the Los Angeles teams, at Phoenix and at San Antonio, before having a puncher’s chance again in the season finale against the Chicago Bulls.
The die is cast. The stage is set. The drama will be wanting, but the right results coming home could bear sweet fruit in the future.
