Dallas Mavericks: Kristaps Porzingis hopeful to play this week

The Dallas Mavericks are still waiting to see if Kristaps Porzingis will be ready to go in either of the upcoming road games against the Golden State Warriors and the Sacramento Kings, according to Brad Townsend.

The Dallas Mavericks are finally preparing for a short stretch of easier opponents over the next four games, something that we should all be happy about. To add to that excitement, the return of Kristaps Porzingis is drawing closer, according to Brad Townsend of The Dallas Morning News.

Dallas has been without Porzingis for the past seven games due to a knee injury compounded with a sickness. He needs to strengthen and work his knee at practice, but has been unable to do as much as he would like because he got sick during his rehab, setting him back further.

Porzingis was able to practice yesterday before the team flew out to Oakland, but was still reportedly not feeling well from his sickness, again according to Townsend. Despite still carrying some lasting discomfort from his sickness, the chance of him playing either tonight or tomorrow is more centered around how his knee responds to yesterday’s workout.

We are still awaiting word on whether he will be ready to go tonight or not, but the general thought is that he could play either tonight or tomorrow, but likely not both. If he is able to return and play significant minutes in one of the games, he should be back on track going forward, although back-to-backs could be up in the air once again.

The Dallas Mavericks have been hurting badly without Porzingis on both ends of the court as their defense in the paint has been impressively bad and the once unstoppable offense has been held to more standard numbers. Even though the Mavs are still the most efficient offense in the league, most of that is due to the first part of the season when they were near unstoppable.

The Dallas Mavericks will look to re-impose their offense on their upcoming opponents as soon as Porzingis is back. Dallas has stayed afloat over the past seven games, but it is time to push back into the top teams of the Western Conference.