MINNEAPOLIS – It wasn’t a moment when the world was about to end. Then again, when Luka Dončić hobbles to the locker room during a game, it’s always a red-alert moment for the Mavericks.
Dončić came down after a move in the paint and clutched the back of his right leg, quickly asking to be removed from the game. It appeared he was kneed in the back of the leg by Jaden McDaniels.
As he limped to the locker room with 1:10 left in the first half of the 120-114 win over Minnesota Tuesday, the Mavericks could do nothing but hold their breath.
They ended up dodging a bullet.
“It got a little scary,” Dončić said after the game. “There are a lot of injuries happening. It’s pretty sore now.
“I stopped and somebody kneed me from behind. My knee went forward. It was not good feelings.”
Dončić returned for the start of the third quarter, but with an extra support sleeve on his right leg that covered the knee, lower thigh and upper calf.
His play was not smooth by any stretch. He airballed a jump shot and would shoot just 10-of-27 from the field.
But he atoned for all of that with a dagger three-pointer with 1:04 to play from 32 feet that clinched the game, putting the Mavericks up 117-109.
Despite the heroics, there still was a sense of relief just seeing Luka back on the floor after a scary moment.
Dončić had a bothersome left calf contusion that kept him out of all four preseason games and most of training camp.
But he had played well in the first two games of the regular season before stumbling on Monday when he shot just 5-of-22 from the field in a 110-102 Mavericks’ win over Utah.
On Tuesday, he had perked up offensively in the second quarter and had 13 points and six assists when he left the game.
New-look Wolves: The Timberwolves got not only Julius Randle but also Donte DiVincenzo in the trade that sent Karl-Anthony Towns to New York.
It’s a different look for the Wolves, but similar to the team they had in May when the Mavericks won the Western Conference championship in five games over the Wolves.
“He gives us physicality offensively, he’s a hit-first guy,” Minnesota coach Chris Finch said of Randle. “He’s created a lot of great offense for his teammates. I think that’s something we’ve really benefited from. It’s been fun to have him.”
That after having the 6-9 Plano Prestonwood product for less than a month since the trade happened.
Randle finished with 20 points, seven rebounds and seven assists on Tuesday. It was a solid game, but Finch said that the transition is clearly not finished.
“We told him after Game 1, you do your thing and we’ll fit in around you,” he said. “We need to see you doing your thing so we can get comfortable with what that is. And he spent most of the preseason and certainly Game 1 against the Lakers trying to defer.”
As for DiVincenzo, Finch said: “Great pro, does whatever you need him to do. Just an ultra-competitive kid. He really is. And that’s where it starts.”
It also included a nifty assist from DiVincenzo to Anthony Edwards for one of the Ant-Man’s six first-quarter three pointers.
With Randle and DiVincenzo, the Wolves indeed got more physical. But will that help them take a further step when the playoffs roll around?
“We didn’t put a roster together to beat Dallas, per se,” Finch said. “Right now, we’re just trying to figure out who we are on a nightly basis, like what we can do at a highly repeatable level. We do feel like we have some physicality.”
Briefly: After Edwards poured in 24 first-quarter points, he would score just 13 the rest of the way . . . The Mavericks got an exemplary showing from P.J. Washington, who had 17 points and eight rebounds. They now are 3-0 this season when the forward reaches double-figure scoring (15-5 including last season) . . . The Mavericks turned the ball over just 10 times against the Wolves, who had 20 turnovers. That resulted in 25 Mavericks’ points off of the Minnesota turnovers, 20 more than the Wolves got off the Mavs’ miscues.
X: @ESefko
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