Mavericks' Dirk Nowitzki: To resume practicing Thursday

Nowitzki, who's already been ruled out for Wednesday's game against the Trail Blazers, will be a full participant in Thursday's practice, Earl K. Sneed of Mavs.com reports. "I'm not really targeting anything," Nowitzki said. "Like I said, we'll see how it goes [Wednesday], and we'll see how it goes [Thursday] in my first practice in a long, long time. I haven't really done some of the stuff that obviously I need to do to practice - some of the full-on cutting, pushing off and changing ends. So, we'll just see how that goes. I'd love to play as soon as I can, but I guess we'll just see in a couple of days."

Analysis:

Nowitzki has already been ruled out of Wednesday's game against the Mavericks, but going through practice Thursday should be a big step in the right direction for the 38-year-old veteran. That said, it doesn't sound as if Nowitzki is going to rush the recovery process and it seems highly unlikely he'll be ready for Friday's tilt with the Clippers. We should see another status update following Thursday's practice, which will give us a better indication of his availability moving forward.