While they’ve had six training camp practices in the last seven days, Dusty May will not have the full allotment of his roster once the games begin.<\/p>\n
Dereck Lively II is sidelined indefinitely so his unavailability for the 2026 NBA China Games won’t be a surprise, but will Morez Johnson Jr. and Santi Aldama be ready to suit up?<\/p>\n
“I don’t know the report,” May said after Friday’s practice. “I know Morez is playing a lot of 5-on-5 now, so he’s obviously much closer.”<\/p>\n
Over the last week, May has cautiously talked about injuries, specifically for Aldama and Johnson. It’s been directly communicated by Masai Ujiri that the Mavericks will be patient with Lively’s recovery from surgery on his right foot. It appears the same approach has been levied to Aldama, who is still rehabbing from surgery and an injection in his right knee performed earlier this year. Aldama spent most of the open portion of Thursday’s practice stretching in the team’s weight room.<\/p>\n
Johnson has battled lower leg soreness throughout the last week, but appears closer to returning to the lineup.<\/p>\n
“He’s still dealing with the ramp back up,” May said. “But most importantly, we want our guys to be healthy, mentally, physically on game nights.”<\/p>\n
May also intimated the precautions for Johnson shouldn’t have any setbacks on his progression because of his familiarity with the staff’s offensive and defensive\u00a0schemes.<\/p>\n
“There’s no reason to take any chances right now, especially him,” May said. “He’s in an advantageous position because he knows our terminology, our language, our practice habits. He’s the only one, so he technically could probably miss practice and play pickup and be fine, as far as being able to function within the group, just because he knows the staff.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While they’ve had six training camp practices in the last seven days, Dusty May will not have the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,6560,686,149,4057,166,6,98352,99933],"class_list":["post-849490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas-mavericks","tag-basketball","tag-brief","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-dallasmavericks","tag-mavericks","tag-nba","tag-tp-dusty-may","tag-tp-injury-update"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117373710079146032","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}