The Dallas Mavericks' 2024-25 season came to an end on Friday night as the Memphis Grizzlies took care of business in the play-in tournament and grabbed a 120-106 victory. It was a valiant effort from the Mavericks; in particular, Anthony Davis was not about to go gently into that good night, as he put up 40 points on 16-29 shooting from the field to try and will the Mavs to victory.

Davis' performance was very heroic in that he managed to power through an assortment of injury woes; he endured a groin, lower back, and a knee injury and was still at the heart of the Mavericks' efforts on the night. Many had even recommended for Davis to not return to action considering that the Mavericks' hopes of salvaging the season were close to nil.

And it does not help matters whatsoever that the Mavericks' handling of injuries is causing a bit of a fuss at the moment, with NBA insider Marc Stein casting the spotlight on Nico Harrison's ardent defense of the medical staff he assembled during the controversial roundtable he held prior to the start of the play-in tournament.

“90 percent of our injuries before the trade were contact injuries. That means they're unavoidable. Since then, since the trade, it's down to like 75 percent. And so when you talk about contact, contact injuries, those. Those are unavoidable injuries. Now, in terms of our medical staff, they're elite, and of course, they're not happy with the amount of injuries, but a lot of those are unavoidable,” Harrison said, via Stein.

Perhaps there is some truth to what Harrison said about some injuries being unavoidable. But if he traded Luka Doncic away due to his grave concern that he might get seriously injured someday due to his purported lack of work ethic, is that not an indictment of the Mavericks' training staff in the first place?

Mavericks' season ends with a merciful whimper

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It might be best for the Mavericks to be away from the spotlight for a while, and exiting from the postseason should lead to that. Their season has been begging to be put to an end for a while now, and on Friday, they finally bowed out of contention.

The past two or so months have been brutal for the Mavericks, and had they made the playoffs, they would have been subject to even greater scrutiny no matter how things shook out for them. Perhaps Anthony Davis could have sustained another injury if he needed to play a heavy workload just to keep the Mavs competitive.

But now, they have a whole offseason to re-assess their strategy both on and off the court as they and the entire city of Dallas continues to reel from the disaster that is the Luka Doncic trade.