Game 9: Dallas Mavericks (2-6) vs. Memphis Grizzlies (3-6) | 7:00pm

[KillerLeft]

I would love for Lively to be available in every game (or nearly that many). But I think the reality is that he has never shown any durability to handle the physicality of the NBA game.

As I have shared before, imo that has to be part of both your roster-building decision making, and also the way minutes are distributed (if he's on your roster, you will need someone else to absorb a big percentage of the physical beating that a center takes).

IIRC someone in the forum (my apologies for not remembering who) said Lively will give you 1000 minutes a season, and you should plan accordingly. I think that was a smart thought process in figuring out the Mavs' best way to use Lively. For reference sake, there are almost 4000 regular-season minutes for each position (and up to over 1150 in the playoffs). As a rookie Lively played 1294 (regular season) + 462 (playoffs). In year 2 he played 833.

And as I've said before, I'm not ready to go there (yet). I still think this might be a blip at the beginning of his career. You could replace "think" with "hope" if you want, and that's fair, but that's still where I am. 

Clearly, you can't PAY him as if he's shown he can stay healthy without him doing so, and I get that. But, if they find a way to work around that issue (hopefully by paying him less than we expected they'd have to) then I, personally, am content to wait on this to materialize with him for quite a bit longer. His on court presence is THAT valuable, to me.