Dallas Mavericks vs. San Antonio Spurs: 3 things to watch in season opener

Dallas gets the regular season started against its divisional rival

The Dallas Mavericks kick off the 2024-2025 NBA season Thursday night against the San Antonio Spurs. Dallas will be defending their Western Conference crown, and starting that campaign right off the bat against the rising Victor Wembanyama and plucky Spurs.

To get the good news out of the way right off the bat: the Mavericks injury report is looking as clean as its looked since training camp started. Coach Jason Kidd told reporters this week that he expects everyone except Dante Exum (recovering from wrist surgery) to be available against San Antonio. That means we’ll finally get to see Luka Doncic play, who missed the entire preseason due to a calf injury suffered in the opening days of training camp.

Here’s what we’re watching for.

How much rust does Luka have to shake off?

Doncic injured his calf during an early training camp practice, and subsequently missed the entire preseason. Doncic told reporters this week that his calf is good to go and said he feels “perfect.”

That’s good news for Mavericks fans, but it will still be interesting to see how Doncic looks right out of the gate against a Spurs team that likely won’t make the playoffs, but should be plenty competitive in year two of Wembanyama. Last season Doncic averaged a triple-double against the Spurs, but shot poorly from the field — 43.4 percent overall and 26.8 percent from three. Wembanyama’s defensive presence is certainly a factor.

Despite Doncic’s poor shooting, the Mavericks have had success against Wembanyama and the Spurs in recent history, so this will be an interesting game to see how ready for the season Doncic is. I wouldn’t expect anything less than Doncic’s usual dominance, but the long lay-off does open the door to this game potentially getting weird in spots for the Mavericks. We won’t know till tip-off, but Doncic should be ready to go.

Klay Thompson needing to assuage fears

Klay Thompson should be totally fine. Since his awful lower leg injuries three years ago, he’s shot 39 percent on nearly 10 three point attempts per game. Post-injury Thompson is still one of the NBA’s most accurate, high-volume shooters. Yes, some parts of his game have declined since the injuries, but his shooting shouldn’t be on that list of concerns.

I say should because for whatever reason, there’s an air of unsettledness around the Mavericks new acquisition. My hunch is it has to do with the fact that fans and media haven’t watched Thompson have a good game in six months — in Klay’s last four basketball games (the three Mavericks preseason games and the Warriors play-in loss to the Kings in April), Thompson has shot a combined 7-of-39 from the field. That’s not great!

That’s also a long time between good games, not in terms of games played mind you, but actual, you know, time. April to October is six months, and six months is long enough to create perceptions in a basketball observers brain. Thompson is decidedly not washed (at least when it comes to shooting the ball), despite some online consternation of the sort this summer, but it’s harder to sure up those doubts when there are no games to be played, or the games you have played in, you’ve shot poorly. Thompson probably needed at least one good preseason game to soothe Mavericks fans worst fear, and unfortunately Thompson shot 7-of-29 this preseason, despite some neat passing and the effects of his floor gravity on full display.

Thompson will be fine, but a good game out the game would help settle the discourse down a bit.

So, what does this actually look like?

It’s a good thing the Mavericks are relatively healthy to start the season, but one thing the preseason injuries did was mask what type of lineup and rotation Jason Kidd wants to roll with.

With Doncic missing every game, Kyrie Irving, Thompson, PJ Washington all missing at least one, it meant the Mavericks never really had a true dress rehearsal type preseason game. We can only infer and make guesses as to what the Mavericks starting lineup and regular rotation will look like.

For example, is Dereck Lively the starter? Kidd said Lively would open training camp as the starter, but said he and Gafford would start this season even if both are healthy. Lively came off the bench one preseason game as well, so while Lively is assumed to be the starter, maybe Kidd shifts back to Gafford.

Past that, the other starters are mostly locked in with Doncic, Irving, Thompson, and Washington. The next questions will be about the bench and the pecking order there. Exum’s injury opens the door for more minutes for Jaden Hardy and Spencer Dinwiddie, but who will be off the bench first of those two for Kidd? How do Naji Marshall and Quintin Grimes slot in as well? Thursday’s game won’t answer all of these questions, as its a long season and Kidd is known to experiment early on. It will just be interesting to see how those decisions fare in a real game that actually matters. For a team that feels as complete as the Mavericks do, there are certainly a lot of questions left to answer.

How to watch

Don’t fear Mavericks fans, as this one is pretty simple: The game tips off at 6:30 p.m. CST and is broadcasted on TNT, or you can watch through the Max app.