Yahoo Sports Dirk Nowitzki may not be healthy for the Dallas Mavericks' season opener
Despite undergoing what the Dallas Mavericks described as minor surgery on his left ankle at the tail end of the team’s tank-fueled, lottery-bound campaign, 40-year-old Dirk Nowitzki felt so good after last season that he not only rejoined the franchise for a record 21st season with the goal of playing all 82 games, but left the door open to returning beyond 2018-19, so long as he could remain healthy.
“I almost played the entire season last year,” Nowitzki told reporters in August, when all signs still pointed to a healthy return to training camp following his April surgery to remove bone spurs from his ankle. “I was healthy and obviously could have played every game, but I decided to have surgery early. If next year is going to go sort of the same, then hey, maybe. I am going to leave the door open.”
Next year is here, and it does not appear to be going the same.
Nowitzki’s rehab suffered a setback a week prior to the start of training camp, when he felt soreness in his left Achilles tendon and suffered some inflammation during a pickup game with his Mavericks teammates, according to reports from ESPN and The Dallas Morning News. Outside of some light shooting, he has yet to participate in preseason activities as a result, and Mavs coach Rick Carlisle told reporters in China on Wednesday morning that Nowitzki was still weeks away from returning.
“This is weeks, not days, as far as getting on the court for live action,” said Carlisle, according to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. “He is making gradual progress, but we’re not just at a point where we can talk about a hard timeline or anything like that.”
Carlisle added that the team needed to see “real significant progress” from Nowitzki , but once he was cleared, it wouldn’t take long for the future Hall of Famer to don a Mavericks uniform for his 21st season, breaking the record with one franchise he shared with Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant.
Asked if he would be healthy for the Mavericks’ season opener in Phoenix on Oct. 17, Nowitzki let out what was respectively described by the Morning News and ESPN as a “harrumph” or “exasperated sigh,” which is just about the perfect response for a 40-year-old embarking on a grueling year of work.
“Those tendons didn’t even get used for five or six years because of the bone spurs,” said Nowitzki, via Eddie Sefko of The Dallas Morning News. “Now they’re moving around and that’s causing the soreness. The actual surgery area is fine.”
Nowitzki returned, in part, to mentor Slovenian rookie wing Luka Doncic, who many believe will take the reins from the German 7-footer and become the next great European star in Dallas. While Nowitzki left the door ajar for a 22nd season, Mavs owner Mark Cuban pegged the odds of his star’s 2019-20 return at “under 50 percent” even before health concerns delayed the start of his 2018-19 campaign.
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Ben Rohrbach is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach
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