Kidd breaks silence on lingering issue that has plagued the Mavericks for months

Ever since the end of November, the Dallas Mavericks have dealt with an unforeseen problem that Jason Kidd has rarely seen over his 30 years of being a player and coach in the NBA.

The Mavs have dealt with a nagging locker room sickness that seems like it hit the team during their road trip to Denver, Miami, and Atlanta near the end of November, and it still hasn't let up. We're now nearly a month and a half past the first game that a Mavericks player missed a game due to illness, and this same illness is still lingering in the locker room as Kyrie Irving was an unexpected scratch from tonight's game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Irving wasn't originally listed on the injury report, but an update on Friday afternoon came as a surprise, and now both of Dallas' superstar guards will miss tonight's game against the No. 1 team in the NBA. Before the game, Jason Kidd opened up about this locker room illness extensively for the first time, and some of the details that he revealed show just how hard this illness has hit the team.

Kidd opens up about locker room illness that's affecting the Mavericks

Kidd said that he has never seen an illness this serious be passed around outside of the COVID-19 days, and emphasized how important doing the "little things" are such as making sure to wash their hands and take vitamins.

"It's tough," Kidd said. "It's in the locker room, some of the coaches are dealing with it too."

Now knowing that even the coaching staff is dealing with this illness, it's clear that the Mavs have a real problem on their hands. This illness has plagued the locker room for a significant time now, and even with the prevention tactics the Mavs are using such as fewer meetings and shorter time spent in these meetings, the illness is still being passed around the team and coaching staff.

As of tonight's game, players who have missed time due to this illness include Daniel Gafford, Quentin Grimes, Irving, Maxi Kleber, Dereck Lively II, Naji Marshall, Klay Thompson, and P.J. Washington, and the Mavs truly can't catch a break considering that this illness hit Thompson and Irving this week. Over 50 percent of Dallas' 15-man roster has suffered from this illness and missed time, and that doesn't include the players who could have possibly been dealing with the sickness but battled through it.

"All you can do is try to prevent it," Kidd said. "Stay away from each other as much as possible."

Regardless of the tactics that Kidd and the Mavericks have implemented to try to limit the sickness that's going around, they can't seem to get it in check. Every time that a player returns from this illness, a different player seems to go down, and it's crucial that they get well over the first few weeks of the New Year.

They can't afford to have any more players miss time considering that Luka Doncic is set to miss significant time with the calf strain that he suffered on Christmas Day, and they can't continue to drop games if they expect to secure a top seed in the West. Dallas is currently 20-14 and the No. 5 seed in the Western Conference after dropping four of the last five games, and they are going to have to find a way to get healthy (outside of Doncic) to remain above water until he returns. This isn't to say that Dallas can't go on another great run later in the season once everyone gets healthy, but having to battle back from being low in the standings is not a problem that they should want to deal with.

The Mavericks are in the middle of arguably their toughest stretch of the season, and having as many players available as possible will be crucial to give them the best shot at taking down some of these elite teams that they will play against over the next few weeks.

After tonight's game against Cleveland, Dallas will play the Memphis Grizzlies, Los Angeles Lakers, Denver Nuggets (x2), and Oklahoma City Thunder over the next two weeks. Kidd and the Mavericks have battled an unbelievable amount of adversity this season when considering how many injuries the team has suffered along with the lingering sickness, and Mavs fans will be hoping that Irving can return soon to help the team weather this tough stretch.