DALLAS — The shorthanded Portland Trail Blazers will play without another key player Sunday night. And it involves another point guard.
Starter Jrue Holiday has been ruled out against the Dallas Mavericks with right calf soreness, leaving the Blazers (6-6) without its top three point guards heading into the final game of a five-game trip.
Holiday was not listed on the team’s initial injury report, but the 6-foot-4 veteran awoke Sunday morning with a balky calf and the Blazers labeled him questionable Sunday afternoon. He tested it out during a pregame warmup at American Airlines Center and was later ruled out.
Multiple Blazers players were unaware of Holiday’s injury until about an hour and 15 minutes before tipoff, when news started spreading through the locker room that he would be sidelined.
Portland interim coach Tiago Splitter, who held a pregame interview with reporters before learning that Holiday had been ruled out, said he likely would start Jerami Grant in Holiday’s place. That would leave the Blazers without a true point guard in the lineup, forcing Deni Avdija and Shaedon Sharpe to assume primary ball-handling responsibilities.
Holiday, who is averaging 16.7 points, 8.3 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.6 steals per game, leads the Blazers in assists this season.
The Blazers are already playing without a pair of point guards — Scoot Henderson and Blake Wesley — who have played a combined six games this season. Henderson has been sidelined all season with a left hamstring injury, and Wesley has missed the last six games with a fracture in his right foot.
Holiday’s injury was harsh pregame news for a team that has stumbled to losses in four of its last six games, including three of four on its early-November trip to Miami, Orlando, New Orleans and Houston. The Blazers are coming off their most lopsided defeat of the season, a 140-116 loss at Houston on Friday night that prompted a players-only meeting afterward.
“Next man up,” Splitter said, when asked about Holiday’s injury. “It’s part of this. At the end of (the day), everybody’s got to be ready.”
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