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DALLAS — Luka Doncic has been dealing with a calf injury during the NBA preseason. As a result, he has yet to play in any preseason games. With the Dallas Mavericks final preseason contest scheduled for Thursday night, will Doncic play?
The injury is not considered to be serious. Still, the Mavs are obviously proceeding with caution in the NBA preseason. There is no reason to risk further injury by rushing Doncic back into game action. With that being said, the team would surely love to have Doncic, Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson all play in a game together before the regular season begins.
Doncic has been trending in a promising direction. Mavs head coach Jason Kidd did not previously rule him out for the game either. So what will the Mavs' final decision be? Is Luka Doncic playing tonight vs. the Bucks?
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Luka Doncic's injury status vs. Bucks
The Mavericks are reportedly planning to rule Doncic out for Thursday night's game against the Bucks, per NBA insider Marc Stein.
Kidd provided an important update on Wednesday after practice.
“Luka went through practice,” Kidd said, via the Dallas Mavericks on YouTube. “We will see how he feels tomorrow. He did the whole practice really, really well… But most likely probably will not participate tomorrow. We will see. But again, lot of positive things for him to go through practice, but we will see how he feels tomorrow.”
Kidd's update is promising. Barring a setback, one has to imagine that Doncic will be ready for the Mavs' season opener next Thursday at the latest. He seems to be progressing well, as Doncic was previously limited to non-contact in practice. The fact that he went through practice this time is important.
Still, Kidd said Doncic “most likely probably will not participate (on Thursday night).” However, Doncic was not officially ruled out by the Mavs head coach. Although, it does appear that Doncic will not play. Of course, Doncic would have been limited in the event that he did return on Thursday against the Bucks.
Overall, the Mavs are 0-3 so far in the preseason. Preseason wins and losses do not matter, though. They are especially easy to ignore when a team's best player does not play.
One takeaway from the preseason has been Klay Thompson's struggles in two games. The thought process is that Thompson will play at a more consistent level once Doncic returns to the floor. Luka is one of the best distributors in the entire league and he should be able to help Thomson receive open looks.
With Kyrie and Luka both on the floor, Thompson will benefit in a pivotal manner without question. The same can be said for PJ Washington, Dereck Lively II and anyone else who ends up sharing the floor with the Mavericks superstars.
When it comes to the question of if Luka Doncic is playing tonight vs. the Bucks, however, the answer is no.
