The Toronto Raptors have little time to get over the crushing loss they suffered at the hands of the Oklahoma City Thunder Tuesday night as they are scheduled to pay a visit to the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night.
Both teams have injury concerns heading into the game.
Lowry injury update
The Raptors have announced that Kyle Lowry will not be in the lineup when they face the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night.
Kyle Lowry will not dress for tonight’s game in Dallas (right ankle sprain). He will continue treatment and be re-accessed daily.#Raptors — RaptorsPR (@RaptorsPR) November 7, 2012
Kyle Lowry will not dress for tonight’s game in Dallas (right ankle sprain). He will continue treatment and be re-accessed daily.#Raptors
— RaptorsPR (@RaptorsPR) November 7, 2012
Lowry sprained his ankle in the second quarter of the loss to the Thunder on Monday night.
@jose3030 Kyle Lowry landed on Serge Ibaka’s foot, the cringe inducing pic twitpic.com/baz115 — CJ Fogler (@cjzero) November 7, 2012
@jose3030 Kyle Lowry landed on Serge Ibaka’s foot, the cringe inducing pic twitpic.com/baz115
— CJ Fogler (@cjzero) November 7, 2012
Luckily for the Raptors, they have more depth than in recent years with Jose Calderon and John Lucas III available. It will still be tough to replace Lowry’s 23 points and seven rebounds per game though.
Mavericks walking wounded
The Dallas Mavericks, who are off to a surprising 3-1 start, have been playing without forward Dirk Nowitzki and the lineup will be even more depleted when they face the Raptors.
Mavericks forward Shawn Marion suffered a sprained MCL in his left knee during Monday’s win over the Portland Trail Blazers. The team announced that he will not play this week and will be re-evaluated next week.
“It’s a little minor thing to deal with,” Marion told ESPN.com. “I’ll go on and treat it and take one day at a time. It could have been a lot worse. Luckily, it’s not.”
Rookie Jae Crowder will likely replace Marion in the starting line-up although other options will include Vince Carter or Dahntay Jones.
Interesting tweet about Crowder:
Mavs Jae Crowder says he considers himself a Ron Artest type-of-player. I asked him to elaborate, “Not all that crazy stuff. Just defense.” — Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) November 5, 2012
Mavs Jae Crowder says he considers himself a Ron Artest type-of-player. I asked him to elaborate, “Not all that crazy stuff. Just defense.”
— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) November 5, 2012
At the shootaround in Dallas on Wednesday morning, it was announced that the Mavericks would also be without Elton Brand against the Raptors as well.
#Mavs F Elton Brand will miss tonight’s game against Toronto because his wife is having a baby. — Dwain Price (@DwainPrice) November 7, 2012
#Mavs F Elton Brand will miss tonight’s game against Toronto because his wife is having a baby.
— Dwain Price (@DwainPrice) November 7, 2012
Jonas’ growing pains continue
Life as a shotblocking centre is not always easy.
Every once in a while, you will come up against an unstoppable force or be left out of position and then you are the highlight of the night on sports shows across Noprth America.
Raptors rookie centre Jonas Valanciunas got his first experience of that sort Tuesday night when Kevin Durant posterized him early in the first quarter.
Valanciunas told the Toronto Sun that he may turn the tables the next time he crosses paths with Durant.
“I don’t want to punch something or (anything when it happened), but you know, what happened (is) what happened. Next time maybe it will be opposite.”