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Report: Dereck Lively II Out for Months With Foot Fracture

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Villanova Basketball

Dallas Mavericks center Dereck Lively II is set to miss two to three months with a small fracture in his foot, per a report from ESPN insider Shams Charania.

Lively, 20, was born in Philadelphia and attended the nearby Westtown School in West Chester, Pa., where he was a teammate of Villanova walk-on guard Wade Chiddick and made himself into the No. 2 prospect in the class of 2022. A 7-foot-1 presence in the low post, Lively attended Duke for one year before declaring for the NBA draft, where the Oklahoma City Thunder selected him 12th overall. The Thunder promptly traded him to the Dallas Mavericks, who he helped reach the NBA Finals in 2024, starting 42 of his 55 games played and averaging 8.8 points, 6.9 rebounds and 1.4 blocks per game.

This season he’s putting up 9.1 points, 7.8 rebounds, 1.7 blocks and 2.6 assists per game, doing a bit of everything and showing an uncommon degree of versatility for a big man. Lively last played in the Mavericks’ Jan. 14 loss to Denver, and with that two to three month timeline, he could make his return before the end of the regular season.

The Mavericks currently occupy the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference, so if the postseason began today, they’d need to make their way through the play-in tournament in order to qualify for the playoffs proper. Should Dereck Lively’s recovery approach the longer end of that window, he might miss the play-in tournament or the first round of the playoffs… but the Mavericks will need to step up in his absence to get there first.

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