Cooper Flagg gave the Dallas Mavericks the biggest number in a study about how much NBA teams lean on their stars. It came from the difference in Dallas’ net rating with him on the floor and with him off it. Casino Guru USA put the Mavericks first in its early-season rankings with a score of 100. The Lakers landed one point behind them, and the Warriors finished one point behind the Lakers. Those scores look close. The numbers underneath them tell three different stories.
Flagg posted a plus-29.9 on/off net rating differential. His Dallas teammates averaged minus-7.37 on the same measure. That put him 37.27 points per 100 possessions above the average teammate, the widest gap in the study. The distinction between those two numbers matters. The first compares how Dallas fared with Flagg playing and sitting. The second compares Flagg’s differential with the typical differential of another Dallas player. That second comparison is what makes his result stand out across the NBA.
It also makes Dallas a fitting place to start a conversation about star power. A player’s share of the scoring is easy to picture. A swing in net rating takes a little more work to understand because every possession involves the other players on the floor, too. Flagg’s number describes how differently the Mavericks fared across his minutes and the minutes he sat. It gives us a reason to look closer at Dallas as a team before trying to assign him credit for every point of that swing.
cooper flagg (small sample) usage/playmaking changes from his rookie season
assist rate: 21.2% -> 32.2%
on-ball rate: 25.8% -> 15.6%
dribbles/touch: 3.96 -> 3.04 pic.twitter.com/dqc6mMqcnJ— Ben Pfeifer (@bjpf_) October 28, 2026
The Lakers and Warriors show two other kinds of reliance
Luka Doncic’s standout figure answers a more straightforward question. How much of the scoring did he supply? Doncic accounted for 26.84% of the Lakers’ points, the second-highest share in the study. The average for his teammates was 10.05%. That’s a gap of 16.79 percentage points, a useful way to see how much of Los Angeles’ scoring came from one player.
Tyrese Maxey makes that comparison more interesting. He supplied 27.20% of Philadelphia’s points, the highest share in the study. His gap over the typical Sixers teammate was also slightly larger than Doncic’s, at 17.19 percentage points. Yet Philadelphia finished fourth overall with a score of 96, three points behind Los Angeles. If the question is which player supplied the greatest share of his team’s points, the answer is Maxey. Ask which team had the larger overall separation between its star and his teammates across the study’s measures, and the Lakers move ahead of the Sixers.
Tyrese Maxey so smooth 😮💨 pic.twitter.com/hmz42HD4BK
— Justin Lever ❤️⚾️ (@JustinLever3) November 5, 2026
Golden State offers another version of the same idea. Stephen Curry led the players selected for the study with a 21.90% player impact estimate, more than twice the 10.60% average for his teammates. Curry also led that group in box plus/minus at plus-14.90, compared with plus-1.04 for the average Warrior outside of Curry. Those are two ways to see how far he separated himself from his teammates. They also give Golden State’s third-place finish a different meaning from the scoring split that stands out in Los Angeles.
What the NBA rankings can tell us this early
Article Continues BelowCasino Guru USA used early-season value over replacement player, or VORP, to pick one player per team. Flagg led Dallas at 0.5. The researchers then compared each selected player with the average of his teammates across six measures, including scoring share, shooting efficiency, and on/off differential. The selection step shapes the entire exercise. The study’s definition of a star starts with who led his roster in one metric during that stretch, and the comparisons that follow depend on who cleared that first step.
The bottom of the rankings makes that especially clear. Phoenix tied for the third-lowest score at 83. Its selected player, Jordan Goodwin, posted a 56.50% true shooting mark against a 55.90% average for his teammates. The resulting 0.60-point gap was the smallest in the study for that measure. Denver tied Phoenix in the overall index, and the figure that stands out there is a different one. Nikola Jokic scored 18.60% of Denver’s points, while his teammates averaged 13.82% individually. Both teams arrived at 83 with different examples of where the gap between their selected player and his teammates stayed relatively small.
The study’s early-season timing gives all of those figures a shelf life. Its methodology explains which statistics went into the index and how researchers chose each player. The supplied figures leave the exact weight of each measure open, so the most revealing comparisons are the ones readers can see directly. Maxey had the largest scoring share. Curry stood out in player impact estimate and box plus/minus. Flagg had the widest gap in on/off differential relative to his teammates.
That’s what makes Cooper Flagg the right place to end, too. Dallas earned the top spot in this snapshot, and his on/off differential stood furthest above his teammates’ average. The next time an NBA ranking says a team leans heavily on its star, start with the question Flagg’s numbers invite. Where, exactly, does that dependence show up?