Monday’s Mavericks/Pelicans Game Postponed

1:13pm: The Mavericks may have had enough players to meet the required minimum tonight, but the league chose to postpone the game in order to continue contact tracing and “to ensure the health and safety of players, coaches and other personnel,” VP of basketball communications Scott Tomlin told Caplan. The contact tracing process is ongoing, per Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press.


11:45am: The NBA is postponing Monday’s game between the Mavericks and Pelicans due to issues related to COVID-19, according to Callie Caplan of The Dallas Morning News. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports (via Twitter) that the Mavs don’t have the required minimum of eight players available.

It’s the fourth game this season that has been postponed, including the third in two days. The Sunday contest between the Heat and Celtics was also postponed, as was Tuesday’s game between the Celtics and Bulls. Before Sunday, all games since December 23 had been played.

Mavericks veterans Josh Richardson, Dorian Finney-Smith and Jalen Brunson were self-isolating as of Friday, and Maxi Kleber joined that list over the weekend. Tim MacMahon of ESPN said on Sunday night (via Twitter) that Dallas wasn’t expected to lose any more players to contact tracing, but it seems that’s no longer the case.

According to Wojnarowski (via Twitter), ongoing contact tracing will leave Dallas with fewer than eight players available tonight, despite the imminent return of Kristaps Porzingis. As MacMahon tweets, that suggests that at least five more Mavericks entered the protocols today.

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