The Dallas Mavericks (24-53) are home for an early Sunday evening game against the Los Angeles Lakers (50-27). The Mavericks are coming off a loss against the Orlando Magic, but one where Cooper Flagg was on fire from the field and he scored 51. The Lakers had a devestating loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in more ways than one on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Here are the main things you need to know:<\/p>\n
The Mavericks are fielding as close to a full team as we\u2019ve seen in several games. Caleb Martin is out with his plantar issue. Moussa Cisse is questionable and I don\u2019t think he\u2019ll play given who Dallas has available. Tyler Smith is questionable due to illness. John Poulakidas is probable to play. Marvin Bagley is as well after dealing with a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n
The Lakers are in a brutal injury position. Luka Doncic went down with a very bad hamstring injury against the Thunder. Austin Reaves also suffered a very bad oblique injury. Both players will be out for weeks and weeks and I don\u2019t see how the Lakers win a playoff round. Dallas native Marcus Smart will miss this game with an ankle injury. Jarred Vanderbilt is questionable as of this writing with a calf issue.<\/p>\n
Give how close to the end of the regular season we are, the Mavericks winning this game is going to drive some people mad. But the Lakers don\u2019t have the horses and I don\u2019t care how bad Dallas has been as of late, when the top heavy Lakers are missing two of their three best players, the Mavericks should have more than enough juice to win.<\/p>\n
Be sure to chime in with your predictions in the comments!<\/p>\n
Consider joining Josh and me on Pod Maverick live after the game on YouTube, we should start LATE. Thanks so much for spending time with us here at Mavs Moneyball. Let\u2019s go Mavs!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Mavericks (24-53) are home for an early Sunday evening game against the Los Angeles Lakers (50-27).…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,35595,103,2663],"class_list":{"0":"post-236718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-headlines","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks-discussion","11":"tag-dallas-news","12":"tag-mavericks-game-coverage"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}