The Dallas Mavericks appear to have dodged a bullet on the Luka Doncic front.
The Mavericks star Doncic was forced to leave Wednesday’s loss to the New Orleans Pelicans early due to a thigh injury. He pushed through discomfort after suffering an apparent non-contact tweak to his thigh in the third quarter but exited for good before the end of the period.
Luka Doncic is playing through the pain with an apparent thigh injury vs. the Pelicans 👀pic.twitter.com/tKUqNFDk54
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) March 9, 2023
Doncic added to the concern after the game by saying that his thigh was “not good” and had been bothering him for at least a week, making it difficult for him to push off and to run.
Luka Dončić on his non-contact thigh injury: “Not good”.
Dončić said it’s been bothering him for a week and has reached a point where he could barely run. Dončić will get an MRI on his left thigh tomorrow and will know more. pic.twitter.com/ENwTqN5ah8
— Landon Thomas (@sixfivelando) March 9, 2023
But the All-NBA guard Doncic got good news when he underwent an MRI on Thursday. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reports that the MRI on Doncic’s thigh came back clean and that he is expected to return to action as soon as the discomfort allows him to.
Dallas’ loss to New Orleans dropped them to 34-33 on the season with just 15 games left to play. That has them in the play-in tournament range at No. 8 in the West (though the Mavericks are just 0.5 games back of the No. 5 seed in an extremely air-tight playoff battle).
The Mavericks have suffered a number of frustrating losses lately and are now just 3-6 when both Doncic and Kyrie Irving play. While Doncic’s clean MRI is great news, Dallas still has a lot to figure and not much time to do it.
