SALT LAKE CITY – Changes, some out of necessity, others by choice, came in bunches on Thursday night for the Mavericks.
First, Kyrie Irving became the latest addition to the injured list, sitting out against the Utah Jazz with a right shoulder strain. That elevated Quentin Grimes into the starting lineup.
Coach Jason Kidd also wanted to switch things up with his big men, so Dereck Lively II and Maxi Kleber, who made his return after nine games on the shelf with a right hamstring strain, started in place of Daniel Gafford and Naji Marshall. P.J. Washington remained out with a right knee sprain.
The results were mixed. The Mavericks got a solid start in the first quarter, but then laid a huge egg in the third quarter and eventually dropped a 115-113 decision to the Jazz.
“I thought they did well,” coach Jason Kidd said of the new lineup. “D-Live got in foul trouble. That’s something we’ll look at tape to see how he can get better. But I thought that group gave us some energy. We got off to a good start.”
That said, the lineup remains a work in progress.
“It’s fluid,” Kidd said. “Just looking at the energy, I thought the group did a great job. We won the first quarter. But as we get healthy, we’ll look at it again and there could be a change. Most likely there will be a change when P.J. comes back.”
The Mavericks have used the next-man-up mantra early and often this season, but the shuffling makes it difficult to get any continuity going.
Still, there were good signs on Thursday. Grimes had 15 points starting in place of Irving and Marshall’s move to the bench seemed to agree with him. He provided a spark with 19 points.
For Kleber, it was nice to be back on the court. Technically, he was cleared to play at the start of this trip Sunday at Denver. But he wasn’t quite ready and the Mavericks took the cautious route.
“Better every day obviously,” Kleber said. “I got to get back rhythm and everything, but we did a lot of work to try to improve strength and endurance, so I’m feeling better.”
Kleber said the three weeks on the sideline weren’t a complete loss. He paid close attention to how the team was playing, especially in the last three games before Thursday, all close losses to teams with championship aspirations.
“I think we have a great team,” Kleber said. “Obviously, we had a couple of tough losses, especially at the end of the game, but you can see the fight, even in games when we’re down, we fight back.
“So I think everything is there, we just got to clean up the small things against good teams, just stuff we that we have to get on the same page. We’ve done a lot of talking, done a lot of video work, a lot of analyzing to figure out better solutions.”
And on Thursday, they tweaked 60 percent of the starting lineup.
Kidd said that there was no significant concern that Irving’s shoulder would be any sort of long-term problem.
Draining week: The three-game trip that ended Thursday seemed particularly long with two razor-close games to start it, plus the crazy, emotional day at Golden State with Klay Thompson’s return to the Bay Area.
It can take a toll on a team.
Kidd said that he and the coaching staff kept their fingers on the pulse of the team through it all.
“That’s ongoing, (monitoring) the emotions of sport or the game of basketball or life itself, because they are human,” Kidd said. “We always talk about close games, being disappointed or being excited. But also they have things that go on outside the arena. That’s always monitored. Those aren’t shared publicly, but we talk about the game.
“This has been an emotional week, starting in Denver and having an opportunity to win there. And then the buildup of that game at Golden State with Klay. We can be a little bit more concerned with the mental fatigue, the physical fatigue. So we got to be cautious of that because we understand the league isn’t going to pause, the games keep coming and we got to be prepared to try to win and put our best foot forward and win as many games as we can during the season. But this has been an emotional week for everybody.”
Picking your poison: Jazz coach Will Hardy was asked what kind of strategy he tries to employ against Luka Dončić.
Basically, he said there’s no good answer to that question.
“We’ve felt in the past the more we can keep Luka on the perimeter, the better,” Hardy said. “A team beating you with a bunch of jump shots, you can sort of live with.
“The games where the Mavs have really hurt us in the past is when we’re seeing seven, eight dunks from guys like Gafford, Lively. When you couple that with the special shotmaking that’s on the Mavericks’ roster, then you’re taking away nothing.”
Other than making Dončić and Thompson work hard for their shots, Hardy said you just have to live with the results, realizing that special players sometimes make special plays.
X: @ESefko
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