Maxi Kleber injury update: Mavericks forward out indefinitely with hamstring tear
After a 15-point loss at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers Wednesday night, the Dallas Mavericks are back to being a .500 team with a 14-14 record. To make matters worse, the team announced Thursday that forward Maxi Kleber will be out indefinitely with a right hamstring tear. This is a significant blow to a Mavericks roster that is already thin in depth, especially in the frontcourt.
Kleber provides the Mavericks with floor spacing as a 6-10 big who can knock down 3s at a consistent clip. But even more so, Kleber is one of Dallas' best defenders, and without him in the rotation, the Mavs' already lackluster defense will suffer even more.
With Kleber sidelined for what could potentially be between 6-8 weeks, according to The Athletic's Shams Charania, the Mavericks are going to have to rely on Dwight Powell and Christian Wood even more. Though Powell doesn't give Dallas any spacing on the offensive side of the ball, he's an athletic pick-and-roll partner for Luka Doncic, whose chemistry is among the best on the team.
Wood has been having a solid first season with Dallas so far, averaging 16.6 points and 7.6 rebounds off the bench, but his defense has always been a glaring hole and a big reason why he hasn't cracked the starting lineup for the Mavs this season. But with Kleber out, the Mavericks need Wood to be more committed on that end of the floor, because the only other option after he and Powell is JaVale McGee who hasn't been in the rotation consistently in recent weeks. McGee also hasn't been effective as a rim protector, the sole reason Dallas signed him to a three-year, $17.2 million contract in the offseason.
Kleber's injury is just the latest bump in the road for a Mavericks team that has seriously underperformed through the first two months of the season. Doncic is playing at an MVP level, ranking second in the league in points per game (33.3), while also ranking in the top five of assists per game (8.7) and ranking first among guards in rebounds (8.4). Spencer Dinwiddie has done an admirable job in filling Jalen Brunson's shoes in the starting lineup (16.6 points, 5.3 assists), but after that, finding consistent production from the rest of Dallas' roster has been a difficult task this season. Even Wood, who is the third-leading scorer on the team, has nights where he'll only put up eight points off the bench.
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The offense should be able to figure itself out as guys like Reggie Bullock and Dorian Finney-Smith begin making 3s at a higher clip, but the defense is seriously troublesome, and Kleber's absence will only heighten that concern. After finishing last season with the seventh-best defense in the league, Dallas has fallen off a cliff this year, ranking 21st. They are the worst rebounding team in the league and allow the fifth-most offensive boards a Game (9.4). Their 3-point defense isn't much better, allowing opponents to shoot 37 percent from downtown on the season, which is seventh-worst in the league.
As it stands, Dallas doesn't have any great options on the roster to replace Kleber, so perhaps they'll be a team looking to make a trade in the near future. But missing Kleber for an extended period of time is far from the only issue plaguing this team right now. The offense is predictable and isn't clicking as it should, the lineups that Jason Kidd is rolling out are questionable and on more than one occasion the Mavericks have racked up losses to some of the worst teams in the league, or a squad missing several of its top players.
This injury to Kleber is a gut punch to the Mavs, who are currently clinging to the No. 9 spot in the West. And while it isn't ideal, perhaps it's the unfortunate event that needed to happen in order for this team to make some sort of move ahead of the trade deadline. Because as of right now, Dallas isn't playing like a playoff team, and certainly not like the team that made it all the way to the Western Conference finals a season ago.
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