Dirk Nowitzki remains committed to salvaging the Dallas Mavericks' season as he continues to sit with lingering soreness in his right Achilles tendon.

"I'm all-in. I want to play," Nowitzki said. 

"This is obviously not a career-ending injury that I've got. It's something that just keeps lingering unfortunately. I can hopefully get over it.

"There's still a lot of season left. December just started. We know that there's a lot of games coming, so hopefully sometime soon I'll be out there and then stay out there. I don't want to jump in and out of the lineup with soreness or fight this whole year. I'd love to be healthy and stay out there once I go."

The Mavericks have the worst record in the Western Conference.

"It's frustrating for me," said Nowitzki. "The whole situation is frustrating to be dealing with something I never have before in my career, so it's tough. But once I'm out there, I don't want the same thing to happen again that just happened last week, so I want to make sure now it's good to go. At this stage of my career, I don't move well anyways, so if I'm out there at 80-90 percent, I don't think I'm a big help. I want to make sure my body's responding the right way and we'll go from there.

"Achilles injuries are tough, and they just limit your movement a lot. Limit my movement 10 years ago, I'd still be able to play effectively out there. But if you limit my movement now, I'm already a step slow, and that makes me three steps slow. It just makes no sense to be out there."