Rick Carlisle took time on Tuesday to talk a lot of Mavericks’ fans off the ledge.
With Kristaps Porzingis sidelined for the second consecutive night with lower-back tightness, rumors began to fly.
Is the injury worse than anybody thought? Is the 7-3 Porzingis being held out for some other reason?
Carlisle wanted to set the record straight.
“The back thing, I don’t expect to be a long-term thing,” Carlisle said before the Mavericks-Celtics game. “We’ll work through this and we’ll get him back on the floor as soon as we can.”
Carlisle reiterated that the back problem very likely is a product of Porzingis having his training camp in live games when he returned from knee surgery in January.