DALLAS — Five Dallas Mavericks players, including forward Kristaps Porzingis, will miss Monday night's game against the Denver Nuggets after being moved into the team's COVID protocols, the team tweeted Monday.
Trey Burke, Boban Marjanović, JaQuori McLaughlin and Isaiah Thomas are the other players currently on the Mavericks' COVID protocols list. (Forward Willie Cauley-Stein will also not be playing on Monday night due to "personal reasons," the team said.)
Recent hardship exemption-signed guard Brandon Knight, who entered COVID protocols last week, is no longer technically on the team's COVID inactive list. His contract expired on Sunday, and the team decided against extending his 10-day contract.
Star guard Luka Dončić recently returned to the team over the weekend after missing 10 straight games of his own due to injury and COVID protocols. Along with Dončić, prominent Mavs rotation players Tim Hardaway Jr. and Maxi Kleber also made their returns from the COVID protocols during Sunday night's 95-86 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Porzingis did not play in Oklahoma City on Sunday night. The team listed "rest" as his reason for not playing. In the four games prior to that contest against the Thunder -- a stretch in which the Mavericks went 3-1 -- Porzingis had been averaging 27.3 points, 8.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 1.0 steal and 2.3 blocks in 33.5 minutes per game.
In late December, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league had "no plans" to pause its season despite a spike in positive cases due to the spread of the omicron variant.
Tipoff for Monday's game against the Denver Nuggets is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the American Airlines Center.
