Training Staff Shake-Up: Mavericks Cut Ties After Injury-Riddled Season
Dallas Mavericks General Manager Nico Harrison has reportedly dismissed head athletic trainer Dionne Calhoun, athletic performance director Keith Belton, and other members of the training staff.
The Mavericks made these moves following an injury-riddled year in which the team finished the regular season just 39-43 and lost in the play-in tournament.
Calhoun, who had been with the Mavericks since 2004 and served as head athletic trainer since 2019, was one of the final remaining staff members from former Director of Player Health and Performance Casey Smith’s staff, according to ESPN.
Smith was controversially fired in August 2023 due to Harrison’s belief he was “too negative,” leading to tension between the organization and former Mavericks guard Luka Doncic, per ESPN.
Belton, a former NFL fullback and UCLA director of football performance, played just one season with the Mavericks before being dismissed.
Previous reporting regarding the Mavericks’ training staff indicates that Belton did not obtain the certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association, which the NBA requires a team strength coach to have.
Belton seemingly clashed with Mavericks’ Director of Health and Performance Johann Bilsborough, with members of the organization reporting a heated confrontation regarding the injury suffered by center Dereck Lively II.
Belton reportedly believed Lively would miss just three games with an ankle sprain near the midway point of the season, but this timetable grew substantially when Bilsborough called for a CT scan that unveiled a stress fracture in his foot.
When asked about the confrontation and handling of this injury, Harrison defended the training staff and said Lively avoided a more serious injury.
“It actually goes to show the strength of our medical team, because he was cleared to play, but his signs and symptoms were—our medical team knew it was something more, and so that’s why they went and tested him again and saw the CT scan, which—they actually avoided a potential catastrophic injury,” he said, per WFAA.
“So you know, you will take the angle of being negative, but it’s actually a positive thing, because they saw with the symptoms, even though he was cleared to play, they didn’t feel right putting him on the floor. And so they went back. They stopped him from playing. They went back. They re-tested, and thank God we saw that he had a stress fracture.”
This move to dismiss both Calhoun and Belton comes as a surprise to many despite the Mavericks’ injury issues during the season. Harrison previously applauded the work of the training staff during the exclusive roundtable.
“Ninety percent of our injuries before the [Luka Doncic] trade were contact injuries,” he said, per The Dallas Morning News.
“That means they’re unavoidable. … Now, in terms of our medical staff, they’re elite, and of course, they’re not happy with the amount of injuries, but a lot of those are unavoidable.”
Now, Dallas will have to start the difficult process of finding a training staff suitable for working alongside an NBA franchise.
