Dallas, TX
Dallas Mavericks Exercise Third-Year Options For Two Players
The NBA regular season has made its return. The Dallas Mavericks have to wait a couple of days into their season as they host Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs. One season removed from making the NBA Finals, the Mavericks are entering the season with high expectations.
Last season, during the club’s deep postseason run, Dereck Lively II broke out during his rookie campaign. The second-year center is expected to make a large impact as the Duke product was pivotal in the playoffs as a rookie.
On Wednesday, the Mavericks announced they are exercising the third-year option for Lively, as well as Olivier-Maxence Prosper. The two young players hoist high potential for Dallas and the club will keep them around as they continue to build a contender around Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
READ MORE: Dirk Nowitzki ‘Would’ve Loved’ To Play With Kobe Bryant
During his rookie season, Lively appeared in 55 games with 42 starts, averaging 8.8 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game. While his numbers aren’t eye-popping, appearing in just 23.5 minutes per contest, he passes the eye test in a big way.
Lively is capable of covering the floor horizontally and vertically as a defender, as he can fill up plenty of space on the floor as a defender. Offensively, he plays off Dallas’ key players, Doncic and Irving, perfectly as a screener and a lob threat. There’s even some potential for him to grow as a floor-spacer, though that’d be an addition to his game that isn’t necessarily needed.
Prosper is more of a long-term project rather than an instant-impact player like Lively, but it makes sense for the team to keep him around as a young player. His potential to become a rotational player with some development is worth the team betting on.
READ MORE: How Will the Spurs Attempt to Defend Luka Doncic?
Stick with MavericksGameday for more coverage of the Dallas Mavericks throughout the NBA offseason.
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Dallas, TX
Dallas weather: June 28 morning forecast
Temperatures are expected to climb into the upper-90s and triple digits over the next week, with no real sign of relief! Sunshine dominates the forecast, with only a very slim chance of rain by the end of next week.
Dallas, TX
Dallas shooting injures 2 as police search for suspect
Dallas police are searching for a shooting suspect after two people were shot early Saturday morning.
The shooting incident happened around 6:30 a.m. when Dallas officers responded to a shooting call in the 7600 block of South Central Expressway, where two people had been shot.
Officials said one victim was taken to the hospital in critical condition by Dallas Fire-Rescue. The other was transported by private vehicle in stable condition.
No arrests have been made as of Saturday afternoon, according to Dallas Police.
The shooting investigation is ongoing and this story will be updated as we learn more.
Dallas, TX
All-day restaurant and patio coming to Dallas’ Knox and more top stories
UPDATE 6-26-2026: Gracie has been found about four miles south of the Cedar Hollow Ranch, according to a Facebook update from Real County Animal Rescue. Ranch manager Vic Jones has assembled a team to safely bring the wandering giraffe home.
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A giraffe named Gracie is missing in Texas, and the search for her has become a tall order.
Gracie, who is about 3 years old, has been missing for nearly two weeks after escaping her enclosure at Cedar Hollow Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, said Vic Jones, who owns the remote property about 100 miles west of San Antonio. He said Wednesday, June 24 that Gracie had wandered into a part of the privately owned preserve that other giraffes previously avoided.
Jones said he has sent up helicopters to look for Gracie, a few sightings have trickled in, and a $5,000 reward is on the table.
But the giraffe, which stands roughly the height of a tree, hasn’t turned up.
“She wound up going up and feeding in an area on the hillside and the rocky ledges that none of the other giraffes had ever gone on before,” Jones said. “And when she came down off of there, she came down on the wrong side of the gate.”
The ranch is in rural Real County, where its roughly 2,700 residents were put on alert to be on the lookout for a missing giraffe. Jones said the search area is extremely remote, and the likelihood of Gracie encountering any humans is low.
“People are not in danger of her because she’s not around people,” Jones said. ‘She’s out in very, very rough, heavily wooded lands.”
The Texas Hill Country has one of the largest concentrations of exotic captive animals in the country. Real County Sheriff Nathan Johnson said the mild climate and rugged terrain seems to serve as a good stand-in for most of the animals’ native African environments.
He rattled off a list of animals that have gone missing over the years, especially after floods, but said this was his first giraffe.
“I’ve had wildebeests, I’ve had water buffalo, I’ve had monkeys, I’ve had zebras, all go missing,” Johnson said. “Sometimes we recover them, and sometimes we don’t.”
While the middle of Texas is not a giraffe’s native environment, Jones said Gracie should be able to find plenty of leaves and other vegetation to eat. He said other animals were not likely to bother her.
Jones said he initially had helicopters searching an area of about 7,500 acres (3,000 hectares) with no luck. A few days later, there was a report that Gracie was spotted to the south.
But by the time they could search the area, Jones said, she was already gone.
“We’re always two three days late for where the information is coming from, so that makes it tough,” Jones said.
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