Mavericks vs Lakers Preview: Late night basketball for Dallas in Los Angeles

The Dallas Mavericks (35-35) play against the Los Angeles Lakers (34-36) Friday night on NBAtv. At this point, in the mire of the Western Conference playoff and play-in race, this is a must-win game for both teams. It’s the late game, starting at 9:30 pm CST, but as it’s not an ESPN or TNT game, I think we can rest assured that this one should start close to the actual listed time. Now, to the main things:

• WHO: Dallas Mavericks vs Los Angeles Lakers
• WHAT: A must win for both teams
• WHERE: Crypto dot com Arena, Los Angeles CA
• WHEN: 9:30 p.m. CST
• HOW: Bally Sports Southwest or NBAtv depending on where you live

On the injury front, there’s some slight improvement. Yes, Luka Doncic is still out, but it’s about 3 hours before tipoff and Kyrie Irving, Tim Hardaway Jr., Markieff Morris, and JaVale McGee are listed as questionable. There’s been no word about Kyrie, but he was shooting and moving well in shootaround (so was Luka Doncic and he was ruled out yesterday). Basically, if Dallas hopes to win, I think Irving has to play.

For the Lakers, Anthony Davis is probable after missing last night’s game (a loss to the Rockets) due to injury management. It seems like LA thought they could steal that one and it turned out not to be the case. LeBron James and Mo Bamba are out for the contest.

There’s a more detailed preview here, written last night. We forgot to do a gambling post, but the Lakers are five point favorites.

I’m on the recap tonight, so I hope it’s a game worth writing about. We’ll see if we can gin up anything else after the game. Thanks for hanging out, Go Mavs.