The Dallas Mavericks have found the problem: their training staff.
After a rocky season during which a band of injuries destroyed all the hope of regrouping following the trade of Luka Dončić who changed franchise, the Mavericks go from several upper members of their health and performance group, according to Espn. This is the third consecutive off -season that the franchise has made major changes to the group.
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In this case, the director general of Mavericks, Nico Harrison, dismissed the chief sports coach Dionne Calhoun, who had been on the team for 21 years, and the director of sports performance Keith Belton, who was Last month, last month was involved in significant intestine struggles on the health decisions of the Mavericks.
Viewed from the outside, injuries were a killing problem for the Mavericks. Only three players have played more than 57 games for the team this season. Kyrie Irving The season ended with an ACL tear. Anthony Davis was immediately sidelined with an adductive tension with which he was dealing after joining the team. PJ Washington has treated knee and ankle injuries, Dereck Lively II fell with an ankle fracture, and Daniel Gafford missed a long time with his own knee injury.
This team has become so in hand, Some have started to speculate We should start to lose games due to a lack of healthy players on the list.
In one way or another, it was only the beginning of dysfunction.
Nico Harrison has made great changes to the MaveRicks training staff before injuries destroy his alleged competitor. (Photo / lm otero)
(Associated Press)
Mavericks training staff would have been a waste under Nico Harrison
In An article published after the end of the Dallas seasonESPN reported that Harrison treatment of training staff was a major fracture point for the team with Dončić and the legend of the Dirk Nowitzki team. The two players would have been close to the former director of health and performance of the Mavericks, a award -winning coach that Harrison dismissed in 2023 while Smith took care of his seriously ill mother.
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According to ESPN, the reason was that Smith was “too negative”. Asked about these statements, Harrison described Smith's situation as a sort of joke “and refused comments.
The performance director of the Athletic team, Jeremy Holsopple, and the therapist Manuel Casey Spangler, who were also close to Dončić, were also dismissed last June.
Harrison replaced Smith with Belton and Director of Health and Performance players Johann Bilsborough. Belton, a former rear of Chicago Bears, had no NBA experience before joining the Mavericks. He spent the previous four years as director of football performance at the UCLA and did not technically have the necessary certifications to be coach of the NBA force, although he was approved by the NBA on a temporary basis while looking for these certifications.
On the other hand, Bilsborough, an Australian sport scientist with a doctorate who also came to the MAVS in the world of football, in this case five seasons with the New England Patriots. Unlike Belton, he had an experience of the NBA, working as Director of Sports Sciences for Boston Celtics from 2017 to 20, but would have left after facing the Boston athletic coach at the time.
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These two hires were reportedly faced regularly, with an animated confrontation on the manipulation of the ankle injury in Lively. During the rehabilitation, Belton would have put Lively through an intense training session and would have thought that he could return to the action in a few days. Bilsborough was not sure and sent alive for computed tomography, which revealed the akle stress fracture. The injury kept a touch away for 2 1/2 months.
There were also disagreements with the Dončić camp for injury deadlines, because Dončić did not work with Belton at all and thought he had undergone a veal strain because of his return of a heel bruising, while Harrison blamed bad conditioning.
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After an MRI on the strain of calves, Bilsborough would have thought that Dončić could return in two or three weeks, while the player's team insisted for six weeks. Dončić's trade with the Lakers made a questionable point. Belton is now also gone, while Bilsborough and Harrison remain.
However, everything cannot be blamed for training staff. Irving's LCA tear was described as a bizarre accident, but also came while the 33 -year -old guard As much as the NBA's largest minute workload following Dončić trade.
