The left calf contusion that forced Mavericks star Luka Doncic to miss the second day of training camp is considered to be minor, writes Mike Curtis of The Dallas Morning News. The team will give Doncic a week to rest before reevaluating his condition, which means he’ll miss a “Fan Jam” open practice on Sunday as well as the preseason opener Monday against Memphis. Barring any unexpected complications, he should be back soon after that.
“He got hit in the calf,” coach Jason Kidd said. “Reported it tight yesterday so they went and got an MRI. We’ll reevaluate him in a week and see where he stands.”
Curtis recalls that Doncic suffered a strain in his left calf last October when the Mavs were in Spain. He was limited to five minutes in an exhibition matchup with Real Madrid, his former team, and sat out the last game of the preseason, but was ready for opening night.
Doncic’s teammates don’t seem concerned about having him miss a week or more of training camp.
“I don’t think it’s going to be hard because when he’s on the court, it’s easy to play with him,” P.J. Washington said. “For us, it’s just learning our spacing and learning where we need to be. He’s going to be Luka, so we’re not really worried about him. It’s just us getting in our right spots, making sure we know the plays and defenses and all of that type of stuff.”
Sources tell Tim MacMahon of ESPN (Twitter link) that there are no concerns about Doncic’s availability for the October 24 opener.
There’s more from Dallas:
- The Mavericks signed Naji Marshall to be a defensive stopper after losing Derrick Jones in free agency, but Marshall may provide an offensive lift as well, Curtis states in a separate story. Klay Thompson was raving about Marshall’s shot-making after the first day of camp. “Naji played incredible,” Thompson said. “The guy was making floaters, pull-ups. I thought he played really well. I was impressed with Naji. He scored a couple of times on me. His jumper was fluid and his mid-range was nice.”
- Thompson had to “get the nerves out” in his first day of training camp with a new team after spending 13 years with the Warriors, Curtis adds in another piece. “It feels like transferring schools,” he said, “but it’s a feeling you want to embrace because it’s so rare to get those butterflies as a player. It’s awesome.”
- Maxi Kleber and Kessler Edwards were both held out of the start of camp, although Kidd didn’t provide a reason, according to Curtis. Kleber missed much of last season’s playoff run with a right shoulder AC joint separation.
Josh green was their best 3 pt shooter in the playoffs, and he’s super athletic. I don’t see klay becoming an upgrade to j green given his age.
Only reason Mavs didn’t beat Celtics was j Kidd’s horrible rotation.. All of Hardy and hardaway minutes should’ve gone to exum.
The reasons the Mavs didn’t beat the Celtics goes far beyond Exum. At positions 2-5 they were the better team and even at the one position the Mavs had them beat…. Holiday and White are great defenders.
Idk that I’d call White or Brown a better player than Kyrie (yes Brown won FMVP, but they’re pretty evenly matched and that continued in the series itself), but otherwise this is correct. The Celtics also had greater versatility and defense. Luka is superhuman, but you can’t win with one guy doing all the work, even moreso when the other team is better than you defensively.
If not going to Exum is why they didn’t win, then why isn’t Exum on a max-deal anywhere? Bashing Kidd cracks me up as well. They did get to the NBA Finals with him as the coach though almost no one thought that they would get out of the 2nd round before the playoffs.
As a Knicks fan, I hate to ever say it, but the C’s were just way better than anyone they played in the playoffs last year.
@ humps….right bazel.
The Mavs didn’t have the talent…
They had Luka, then the Celtics outmatched them 2-9…
Brown is a 2 way player… positive contributions on both ends outweigh postive offence and negative defence…