Dallas Mavericks star Anthony Davis — who has been out since Feb. 8 with an adductor strain — will return Monday night against the Brooklyn Nets, the team announced.
Davis pushed hard in his rehab to make his return late this season even as the Mavericks are in a tight race with the Phoenix Suns for 10th in the West.
Mavericks coach Jason Kidd said Davis will be on a 28-minute limit Monday.
“We’d like to have a healthy, positive experience on the minute restriction he’ll be on,” Kidd said before the game. “We understand he’s one of the best players in the world, but he’s been out for some time. We just want a healthy, positive experience.”
The defending Western Conference champions have been decimated by injuries this season, most recently with star guard Kyrie Irving tearing an ACL earlier this month.
Although there were conversations between Davis and the Mavericks about potentially holding him out for the remainder of the season, sources said, he was adamant about making a healthy return to action.
“I think you’ve got to commend him for working to get back,” Kidd said. “This is his job, so he feels responsible to get back to work and just understanding that first part is just who he is, and the second part we can always talk about the future, so that’s the balance we have to look at, and tonight’s the start of the rest of the season.
“But, again, he gets paid to play. His character for working to get back with 12 games left just shows how much he cares about what he wants to do, and that’s to help his team win.”
Davis has appeared in just one game for the Mavericks since the seismic trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers — a dominant 26-point, 16-rebound, 7-assist performance that ended early in the third quarter.
Davis is averaging 25.7 points and 12.0 rebounds this season; he became just the third player in NBA history to average those numbers before changing teams midseason, according to ESPN Research, joining 1964-65 Wilt Chamberlain and 2016-17 DeMarcus Cousins.
ESPN’s Tim Bontemps contributed to this report.
