The Dallas Mavericks host the San Antonio Spurs on Thursday night for the season opener for both teams. The match starts at 6:30 PM local time and will be broadcast nationally on TNT. It will be the first game of the season for MVP candidate Luka Doncic, who is playing NBA basketball for the first time since the Finals; he missed the entire preparation with a calf injury. He takes on second-year megastar Victor Wembanyama in what should be a fantastic match. Here are the most important things you need to know:

• WHO: Dallas Mavericks vs. San Antonio Spurs
• WHAT: The last preseason game for Dallas
• WHERE: American Airlines Center, Dallas, Texas
• WHEN: 6:30 am pm CST
• HOW: TNT

In terms of injuries, the Mavericks are only missing Dante Exum, who is out for a long time with a wrist injury. All others have no injury indication. On the Spurs side, they are missing Devin Vassell.

If you want to read more, there’s a lot on the site today. Josh wrote a longer game preview here. There are TWO Luka as MVP posts; the first of Ben arguing about the story table and the other of Mette explaining what he has to do with the basketball Doncic is going to play to earn it. We also made record predictions about how this season will go.

As you can see below, you can join me in a room on Playback during the game (although I may not be able to start until halftime). Also consider following Josh and I live on Pod Maverick after the match on YouTube, we should start around 9:15pm. Thank you so much for spending time with us here at Mavs Moneyball. Let’s go Mavs!