How Kyrie Irving’s injury reforms the game race in the west

A team from Dallas Mavericks that has been beaten by injuries since the beginning of 19-10 suffered its greatest medical loss of the season on Tuesday, when the Shams Charania de ESPN reported that the star guard Kyrie Irving had been diagnosed with a tear of LCA derived from their early injury in Monday’s defeat against the Kings of Sacrament.

Without Luka Doncic, changed to Los Angeles Lakers just over a month ago, or the All-Star acquired for him (Anthony Davis, marginalized by an adductor tension), the Mavericks depended largely on Irving to keep his offense to float. Dallas also lacks the Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II centers and dealt with a short -term injury to advance to PJ Washington, which means that Irving and Klay Thompson were the only regular headlines of the team available on Monday.

The absence of Irving will remain in the 2025-26 season, causing problems for a team that hoped to win a championship with Davis after reaching the NBA finals of 2024 led by the Doncic and Irving duo.

For a team that entered this season with the hopes of the title, the best path of the MAVs even to reach the postseason is now probable through the Game of the West Conference game. But injury problems leave them vulnerable to getting lost completely. The good news? The tenth place of Mavericks have a mattress of 3.5 games for the final game position before the teams that deal with their own problems. The Phoenix Suns are sailing for a stormy season with Kevin Durant at the Commercial Conversation Center, while the San Antonio Spurs had their own setback of injuries with Victor Wembanyama for the rest of the campaign due to deep vein thrombosis.

We are going to immerse ourselves in what follows for the Mavericks and broken down what to expect from the playing race in the west, which suddenly includes a former team of the five children who has become one of the most popular in the League.

How good is Dallas without Kyrie?

In 10 games this season without maidic or irving, the Mavericks have gone 3-7 with a differential of less 8.5 points. That is inflated by a 43 -point defeat against the Cleveland Cavaliers leaders of the League immediately after the shocking trade of Doncic, but Dallas has been surpassed by 42 points combined in nine other games without both guards. The Mavericks have pressed the defensively defensively with Irving out of the court, but fought to score. Dallas’s offensive qualification falls into more than eight points for every 100 possessions without it, According to the advanced NBA statistics.

The Mavericks were built around the idea of ​​having Doncic or Irving on the court at all times, which leaves the team with a limited ball control and game elsewhere in the list. Spencer Dinwiddie now enters a fundamental role as the main shipowner of Dallas, but it is not almost the efficient scorer and Irving.

Now it would be an ideal time for the third year guard, Jaden Hardy, to assume a more important role. Hardy averages 19 points for 36 minutes and is the most explosive athlete of Dallas in the perimeter, but has seen his game time fluctuate and left the game on Monday due to an ankle injury. That could leave the Mavericks depending on the bidirectional player Brandon Williams as his short -term backup shipowner. Worse, Dallas cannot fill his position in the 15 open list until the last week of the season because the team is too close to a hard limit in the lowest luxury tax apron of the NBA caused by low season movements.

The ray of hope for the fans of the Mavericks is that Davis could return soon from the tension of the adductor he suffered in his debut in Dallas, giving the team more scoring. Davis is scheduled for a reevaluation of his recovery at the end of this week. With Davis filling the massive hole in the center created by injuries to both Gafford and Lively, Mavericks can expect to reorient around the defense and at least play .500 ball by the section.

Looking towards the future, the Big Men surplus of Dallas could lead to difficult low season options. The recovery of LCA’s tears has generally required at least nine months for NBA players, often more as a full year, so it cannot be expected realistically for the beginning of the 2025-26 season. With that in mind, and it is unlikely that the team has access to its medium level exception to add free agents for more than the minimum wage, mavericks might need to consider one of its centers for a bantero to complement Irving.

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A game race becomes two

The confrontation of Monday night against the Kings was crucial because both Dallas and Sacramento are part of a logjam of five teams from sixth to 10 in the West classification with only one game and a half separation from top to bottom. Now, that has essentially changed to a four -team race for the last place of guaranteed playoffs, as well as another competition for the final game position.

Let’s start at the top of this package. The Golden State Warriors, in sixth and 8-1 with Jimmy Butler in the alignment, are the clear favorite to avoid the game (49%of the simulations) with the Minnesota Timberwolves (33%) and the Los Angeles clippers (23%) are still very in the mixture. The Kings, projected for almost two victories less than any of those teams, appear in the ninth place.

That leaves the race for the tenth place as one to see. Historically, ending how the lowest seed in the game has not been a great reward. Team No. 10 has not yet won two road games and has reached the playoffs in four years of the current format of the game tournament, and only two of the eight teams that ended tenth have avoided the elimination in its inauguration. The Mavericks were already the five most likely teams to finish 10º in projections using the ESPN basketball power index (BPI) due to their other injuries. Without Irving, they now end among the top six in less than 1% of the simulations.

There are two other separation games in the projections between Sacramento and Dallas, creating a potential opening for a team to jump to the Mavericks and end the tenth in the west. Fortunately for Dallas, the two most likely contenders, the Suns and the Spurs, seem unable to do that type of career.

The Suns, three games on .500 in early February, have collapsed as Durant’s commercial rumors increased before the deadline of February 6. Phoenix has 4-11 since the beginning of February and 2-8 in the last 10 games. The Suns still reach the game in 20% of the BPI simulations, but the projections cannot account for the executable vibrations of Phoenix.

Meanwhile, Wembanyama’s absence has slowed the impulse of the San Antonio game. The Spurs have 2-5 since it was marginalized during the star game, including a pair of road losses to the New Orleans pelicans full of injuries. Due to the importance of Wembanyama, BPI qualifies San Antonio the weakest of the teams in the game mixture depending on the current staff.

Can Portland make a race?

Blazers are the only team outside West’s play points in a positive address. After a start of 13-28, Portland has gone 15-6 in the last 21 games to join the game race. The BPI projection describes the current version of the Blazers better than the Mavericks or the Spurs, but still shows that the team reaches the game only 8% of the simulations.

There are two obstacles for Portland to reach the postseason for the first time since 2021. First, Blazers have a batch of land to recover the classification. Not only are they four Dallas games, but the Mavericks also have the tiebreaker face to the head by winning the 3-1 season series. Portland would have to win five games more than Dallas of the last 20 to overcome the Mavericks.

Second, Blazers face a more difficult schedule in the section. Only Phoenix has a more difficult remaining schedule throughout the league than Portland, by BPI, while the difficulty that the final stretch of Dallas is located near the medium. The Blazers still have four remaining games against the three best teams in the League, including this week’s trips to Boston and Oklahoma City to close a road trip that began 4-1. If Portland can remain in the mixture until the end of March, the April calendar of the Blazers becomes easier.

Portland plays five teams below. Even entertaining the possibility that the Blazers reach the postseason is remarkable given how without direction that appeared in the middle of the season. The development of Portland, catalyzed by the young strikers Deni Avdija and Toumani Camara and the dramatic progress of Scoot Henderson in his second season, is encouraging for the future.