New Look Mavs Hope To Break Even Against Toronto

With the Dallas Mavericks experimenting with new lineups, they welcome a hungry Raptors team to town.

The Dallas Mavericks will host the Toronto Raptors tonight in what should be a tough matchup. A win tonight would even the season series and likely dictate which direction coach Rick Carlisle takes with the roster.

With playoff chances dwindling game by game, the Mavs will continue to experiment with their starting lineup in hopes of some positive revelations.

We got a taste of the “Carlisle Experiment” when Dallas defeated the L.A. Clippers 97-95 on Thursday night. Carlisle chose to inject trade deadline acquisition, Nerlens Noel, into the starting lineup at center and replace Yogi Ferrell with Seth Curry at point guard.

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Both moves paid instant dividends with Noel grabbing 12 rebounds and Curry leading all scorers with 23.

Likely, we will see the same lineup (Curry, Matthews, Barnes, Nowitzki, Noel) this evening.

Hopefully this new unit can stop the surging Raptors, winners of their last four. They will need to do a better job of containing DeMar DeRozan who came up big in the last meeting, scoring a game-high 25 points on 10-of-17 shooting.

Although this game offers little to no playoff implication for the Mavericks, it will be interesting to see if the new lineup is the real deal or if they just caught the Clippers sleeping.

Next: Rick Carlisle's Experiments Mean Shift in Season for Mavs

You can watch tonight’s game at 8:30 PM ET on Fox Sports Southwest or TSN1.