Kristaps Porzingis will miss his third consecutive game with lower back tightness, Rick Carlisle said Thursday, about 90 minutes before tipoff vs. the 76ers.
On their pregame injury report, the Mavericks downgraded Porzingis to doubtful after listing him as questionable on Wednesday’s report.
The 25-year-old center hasn’t played since Feb. 14 because of his injury and Dallas’ two postponements following Texas’ severe weather last week.
The Mavericks upgraded starting forward Maxi Kleber (left ankle sprain) from questionable to probable to face Philadelphia. After suffering the injury Monday against the Grizzlies, Kleber missed the Mavericks’ 110-107 win Tuesday night over the Celtics.
The two have each missed significant time this season — Porzingis the first nine games while recovering from October knee surgery and Kleber 11 games in January after testing positive for COVID-19.
Carlisle said Tuesday he didn’t expect Porzingis’ back injury to be a “long-term thing.”
Before the NBA postponed two Mavericks’ games last week in response to Texas’ winter storms and power outages, Porzingis had appeared to find a rhythm offensively, averaging 22.8 points and shooting 50% from the field across eight games.
His defensive statistics, however, have ranked as some of the worst in the league and hampered the Mavericks’ season-long pursuit of improving their coverage.
“The challenge comes with starting your season midstream and not having the summer workouts, the preseason workouts or the traditional training camp to build a base,” Carlisle said Tuesday.
“I sound like a broken record saying stuff I’ve been saying the last three days, but that’s the truth, and so we’ll work through this. We’ll get him back out on the floor as soon as we can.”
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