Replacing Klay Thompson’s Shooting Volume

When the Dallas Mavericks opted to buy out Klay Thompson this week, they opted opt out of nearly a quarter of the team’s three point shooting attempts from the 2025-26 season. Thompson hit 202 and the Mavericks hit 899 as a team. That made this week’s survey question easy… who on the roster would step up to deliver more makes for Dallas this season?

This poll and the results are perfect for the middle of summer. It’s a three-way split between Kyrie Irving, Max Christie, and someone else on the roster, trailed by 10% for Cooper Flagg.

Let’s start with him first. Last season, Flagg shot 17 times per game, including 3.5 from beyond the arc where he hit a kind of bleak 29.5%. It’s safe to assume his shot volume might increase by 1-3 shots a game but that might actually be hard to do. I suspect the Mavericks attempt to get him to take maybe one more attempt from beyond the arc per game, but he’s probably the biggest X factor on this list.

Then, we come to Kyrie, who is probably the safest bet to assume the volume load. He didn’t play last season but when he did in 2024-25, he took 7.2 per game. Klay’s leaving just under eight three-point attempts per game on the table. Kyrie being a willing gunner will very much alleviate some of the three-point shooting concerns in Dallas.

Max Christie is a good candidate to up his shooting volume but he’s already taking six a game for Dallas. He might need to play a bit more per game in order to really help Dallas out with more three pointers.

As of now, I don’t see anyone else who really should be taking more threes. So this could get weird. But if Dallas does become a better three-point shooting team, they may well blow past their over/under, which is currently set at 32.5 by our partner FanDuel.