Mavericks make changes to staff
The Dallas Mavericks have decided to make some changes to their current staff. The Mavericks have decided to go another direction after firing head athletic trainer Dionne Calhoun and athletic performance director Keith Belton. It will be the third straight year that the Mavericks will have made big changes to their health and performance group.
The decision comes after mounting scrutiny over the team’s ongoing injury woes, which have plagued the roster for the past two seasons and derailed multiple playoff pushes. According to sources within the organization, the decision to part ways with Calhoun and Belton was driven by both performance concerns and a desire to modernize the team’s approach to player health and recovery.
In a recent article by Paul Livengood, he stated that general manager Nico Harrison praised both Calhoun and Belton for their time with the Mavericks.
“In terms of our medical staff, they’re elite, and of course, they’re not happy with the amount of injuries, but a lot of those are unavoidable,” Harrison said, noting that most of the team’s injuries were contact injuries.
Dereck Lively injury
There were major issues within the Dallas Mavericks organization on how the medical staff handled Dereck Lively’s injury at the time. According to an article by ESPN, Tim MacMahon, the tension was heightened by improper handling of the injury.
That argument stemmed from a disagreement regarding the treatment of Dallas center Dereck Lively II, who went through an intense return-to-play workout under Belton’s supervision a day before a CT scan revealed that the big man had a stress fracture in his right ankle, an injury that sidelined him for three months.
Harrison again praised the medical staff for a job well done during the injury.
“It goes to show the strength of our medical team, because he was cleared to play, but his signs and symptoms wereâour medical team knew it was something more, and so that’s why they went and tested him again and saw the CT scan, whichâthey avoided a potential catastrophic injury,” Harrison said. “So you know, you will take the angle of being negative, but it’s a positive thing, because they saw with the symptoms, even though he was cleared to play, they didn’t feel right putting him on the floor. And so they went back. They stopped him from playing. They went back. They re-tested, and thank God we saw that he had a stress fracture.”
Injuries caused the Mavericks to miss a lot of games
There were only 3 players who played a total of 57 games or more. There were also several injuries to players, such as Kyrie Irving tearing his ACL, and PJ Washington had a multitude of injuries. The Mavericks will begin the search immediately for a new athletic trainer and performance coach. Calhoun will be hard to replace as he was with the team for a total of 21 years. The next hire will be one of the most important hires of Harrison’s career as he looks to stabilize the franchise.
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