The Dallas Mavericks are pretty optimistic that Kristaps Porzingis will be 100 percent good to go at the start of next season. The versatile forward, whom they acquired from the New York Knicks via trade in February, has missed more than a year while recovering from an ACL injury.
There were reports that Porzingis might have been able to play at the end of last season, but with the Mavs not really in a position to contend for a title, team officials decided to completely shut him down.
But now that Porzingis is completely healthy, the belief from within the Mavericks organization is that he'll be back to playing the way he did prior to his injury. Still, the Mavs will be extra cautious next season, as another injury to the Latvian star could hurt their chances of competing for a playoff spot.
In an interview with Sirius XM, Mavs owner Mark Cuban said that one of their plans for Porzingis next season is to ‘load manage' him in order to monitor his health.
“We're certainly going to load manage him. You're going to see load management more and more. The league was smart to say that you can't do it on big TV games and you can't do it on the road.”
Load management has been a way of most NBA teams to rest their players through the course of the regular season. However, there are some instances wherein it is being used to rest guys who are coming off serious injuries. It is what the Toronto Raptors did with Kawhi Leonard last season.
The Mavs have high aspirations, but they also do not want to rush Porzingis. This is the right thing to do at the moment because it's still unclear if the 23-year-old forward is ready to return to NBA action.
Prior to his injury in 2018, Porzingis was averaging 22.7 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 2.4 blocks while shooting 39.5 percent from beyond the arc.
Those are numbers that the Mavericks are hoping that he could replicate next season.
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