Mavs-Warriors preview: Tough trip opens with injuries galore, including Luka

SAN FRANCISCO – If you were looking for that so-called meat of the Mavericks’ season, welcome to the ham, pastrami, salami and ground beef portion of the schedule.

Now, if only their prime carnivore was available.

The Mavericks begin a five-game trip Saturday night at Golden State and all five games in the next eight days will be against teams bunched closely with the Mavericks in the Western Conference standings.

After the Warriors, it’ll be visits to Utah, the Los Angeles Clippers and Sacramento, twice.

Tack on a home game against Minnesota and a Feb. 15 match in Denver and the Mavericks have seven games left before the All-Star break that will go a long way toward determining whether they stay in the running for a top-four seed in the West.

It would be great if the Mavericks were going to have a fully-functioning Luka Dončić on hand for this critical stretch. But that’s not the case, at least not for Saturday’s game.

The superstar point guard did not make the trip because of the right heel injury he suffered in the third quarter Thursday against New Orleans.

Coach Jason Kidd said Dončić and Davis Bertans both would not travel. It remains to be seen whether either will be able to rejoin the team at some point on the trip.

Luka’s absence on Saturday night, however, puts a major damper on what was supposed to be a marquee nationally televised battle between him and Golden State’s Steph Curry.

Now some of the luster is removed from the Mavericks’ first visit to the Chase Center since the Warriors ended their season last May. Golden State’s Game 5 win ended the Mavericks’ fairy tale run into the Western Conference finals. The Warriors would go on to win the championship.

Now, both teams are hovering around .500 and waiting for one extended hot streak to put themselves in a strong position heading into he stretch drive after the All-Star break.

“All the wins are important, especially before the break,” Kidd said. He said knocking out two home wins this week was critical, but added “now we’ve got a tough five-game road trip coming up.”

Here’s what else to watch for as the Mavericks meet the Warriors Saturday:

• Can Spencer Dinwiddie continue the premier production he accounted for when Dončić missed virtually all of a two-game trip last week? Maybe a bigger question is: will Dinwiddie play? For right knee/injury recovery, Dinwiddie is listed as questionable for Saturday’s game. He was simply brilliant without Luka last week. In those games, when the Mavericks went 1-1, Dinwiddie had 71 points. The Mavericks had a solid win at Phoenix and a hard-fought loss in Utah. Until Luka returns, it’s going to require everybody to put in overtime, particularly Dinwiddie, Tim Hardaway Jr., Dwight Powell, Josh Green and, possibly, rookie Jaden Hardy.
• And, by the way, the Mavericks will be without Christian Wood (thumb) and Maxi Kleber (hamstring) again. Wood said he could return next week on this trip.
• The Mavericks have won three of four but they still have not had a good run on the road. They are
• The Warriors are coming off a 1-2 road trip on which they lost the last two games at Minnesota and Denver. The win came at Oklahoma City. The trip continued a season-long trend for the Warriors, and that’s that they aren’t very good defensively. They are 27^th in the NBA giving up 118.3 points per game. Their fast pace skews that a bit, but even so, they are only 17^th in the league in overall defensive rating.
• The Warriors have three 20-point-plus scorers, led by Curry at 29.7 points per game. Klay Thompson has averaged 21 and Jordan Poole goes for 20.8 per game. Thompson and Curry have each missed at least a dozen games, but Poole has appeared in all 52, starting 30.
• Draymond Green missed the Warriors’ game at Denver on Thursday with right calf tightness. Andre Iguodala has missed nine games in a row with right hip soreness.
• The Mavericks won the first meeting in Dallas in late November behind Luka’s triple double (41-12-12).
• DALLAS MAVERICKS (28-25) at GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS (26-26)
• When: 7:30 p.m., Saturday.
• Where: Chase Center, San Francisco.
• TV: ABC (Channel 8).
• Radio:1 FM, 99.1 FM Zona MX (Spanish).

Twitter: @ESefko