HOUSTON -- Dallas Mavericks coach Dusty May, fresh off winning an NCAA championship at Michigan, received a rude welcome to the NBA from the Houston Rockets.
Kyrie Irving's return after sitting out a full season wasn't much fun, either, because of a Houston defense that identified the eight-time All-Star guard as its top priority in his first regular-season game since sustaining a knee injury in March 2025.
The Rockets rolled to a 32-point halftime lead en route to a 128-110 win over the Mavericks in both team's season opener Wednesday night at the Toyota Center. According to ESPN Research, it was the largest halftime deficit in a head coach's first game with a team in NBA history.
"We had a couple of things that didn't go in our favor, and we just didn't hold our composure," said May, who had a 190-82 record as a college head coach, including 37-3 last season. "We let go of the rope as a group, but overall, I thought we played and competed three out of the four quarters. Just the second [quarter], we couldn't figure out a way to right the ship."
Irving, whose minutes will be gradually ramped up, finished with 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting in 24 minutes. He had only four points and committed three turnovers in the first half, when the Rockets frequently sent a second defender at him to try to force the ball out of his hands.
"Kyrie's been out 600 days and our game plan was all him," said Rockets star Kevin Durant, who matched Jabari Smith Jr. with a team-high 30 points. "We talked about trapping him. And Cooper Flagg, we wanted to see how the game went. We didn't want to trap him to start the game. Kyrie is that dangerous."
The Rockets blew open the game by outscoring the Mavs by a 38-12 margin in the second quarter. Dallas had twice as many turnovers as buckets in the quarter, going 4-of-19 from the field, including 0-of-14 from 3-point range.
"We've just got to take this one [on] the chin," Irving said. "They put on their boxing gloves and they beat us up pretty good in that second quarter. ... I've got to do a better job of leading us out and just not necessarily playing so timid and getting some shots up and aggressively attacking double-teams."
The Mavs' transition defense was especially dreadful, giving up 20 fast-break points in the first half. Fixing those issues was one of the focal points during Dallas' training camp and the preseason, but May said the Mavs "let go of our principles" and allowed the game to get out of reach.
"We've got to find guys, myself included, that are going to pick up our level of communication and be leaders out there," said Flagg, who scored 23 of his game-high 32 points in the second half. "I don't think we really had that tonight. We didn't really have anybody that was setting a tone defensively, communicating, getting everybody on the same page, and it really showed in that second quarter."
