The Chicago Bulls visited the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center on Sunday in the final game of Dallas' 2025-26 season, a night shaped less by pride than by the draft board. The Mavericks entered tied with Memphis at 25-56 for the sixth-best lottery odds, and Dallas was favored by 6.5 points over a Bulls team missing Josh Giddey, Matas Buzelis, Isaac Okoro, Yabusele and others.
Dallas had an 8.2% chance at the No. 1 pick and a 34.4% chance at a top-four selection, numbers that made every possession matter for reasons far bigger than the scoreboard. Memphis was playing Houston as a 17-point underdog while carrying a seven-game losing streak, leaving the lottery picture unsettled but heavily tilted toward Dallas' control of its own fate.
The weight in the matchup sat on Cooper Flagg, the rookie Dallas was expected to feed in the finale. Flagg had just scored 33 points against San Antonio on Friday on 25 shots, and his season already included eruptions of 51, 49 and 45 points. With the listed total at 246.5 points, the under had room to breathe even before the opening tip, and the Mavericks were expected to cover the spread against a Chicago team whose first-round pick belonged to Portland.
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That setup carried echoes of a 2023 meeting between the same teams, when end-of-roster Mavericks nearly stole a game from Chicago and hurt their lottery position in the process. This time, Dallas went into the night in a different place, tied with Memphis for the sixth-best odds and with no incentive to turn a meaningless win into a costly loss. The Bulls, for their part, arrived with little competitive reason to push hard either, which made the game feel less like a chase for victory than a test of how cleanly both sides could get through it.
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The one thing Dallas could not afford was another detour like Wednesday, when Jason Kidd pulled his starters in a five-point game. Sunday offered a cleaner path, a final chance to keep the focus on Flagg and the lottery outcome instead of one more scramble that could change the math. For the Mavericks, the season ended with the draft, not the record, as the only result that still mattered.
