On Thursday evening, the Dallas Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves will play Game 5 of the Western Conference finals at the Target Center.

For the game, both teams have announced their injury reports (updated as of 2:30 Eastern Time).

The Mavs have listed Luka Doncic and Dereck Lively II as questionable, while Olivier-Maxence Prosper has been ruled out.

Meanwhile, the Timberwolves have listed starting point guard Mike Conley as questionable.

The Mavs have a 3-1 lead in the series, so they can advance to the 2024 NBA Finals with a victory.

If the Timberwolves stay alive, Game 6 would be back in Dallas on Saturday evening.

Most recently, the Timberwolves won Game 4 (on the road) by a score of 105-100.

All-Star guard Anthony Edwards led the way with 29 points, ten rebounds and nine assists while shooting 11/25 from the field and 2/5 from the three-point range in 40 minutes of playing time.

Whoever wins the series will face off against Jayson Tatum and the Boston Celtics in the Finals.

The Celtics swept the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals.

Game 1 of the series will be on June 6 in Boston, so the Celtics will be more rested than either the Timberwolves or the Mavs.

The Mavs are the fifth seed and beat the Los Angeles Clippers and Oklahoma City Thunder in the first two rounds.

As for the Timberwolves, they are the third seed and defeated the Phoenix Suns and the Denver Nuggets in the first two rounds.

FC Dallas kicked off their three-game road trip on Wednesday night with a 3-1 loss to the LA Galaxy.

LA got two goals from Dejan Joveljic, including one penalty kick before halftime to secure the win. Riqui Puig added an insurance goal in the second half stoppage time after FC Dallas went down to ten men when Nkosi Tafari picked up a second yellow card.

Patrickson Delgado scored his third goal in seven days after scoring the equalizing goal tonight.

Joveljic got LA on the board in the 4th minute. Mark Delgado helped set up the goal with a long ball to Gabriel Pec, who then laid the ball off to Joveljic at the top of the penalty box for his first goal of the night.

Delgado tied it up in the 22nd minute for FC Dallas on another wonderful strike from the Ecuadorian. Paul Arriola played Marco Farfan out along the wings. Farfan sent a low cross into the penalty area that Delgado got a foot on and immediately redirected into the top part of the goal.

The hosts nearly got the lead back in the 30th minute as Goalkeeper Maarten Paes was whistled for a foul in the penalty area. Paes saved LA’s first penalty kick, his second penalty save of the season.

The Galaxy received another attempt from the penalty spot in the second half as they regained their lead on a penalty kick in the 66th minute from Joveljic.

FC Dallas was reduced to ten men for the game’s final few minutes as Tafari earned a second yellow on the night. LA made Dallas pay for that in stoppage time as Puig scored the Galaxy’s third goal.

Instant Reaction: Wednesday night games on the west coast suck. I’ll just say that right off the top here. FC Dallas responded well after going down a goal but the Galaxy have a lot of talent up top that is tough to contend with. The stat line isn’t pretty either, with LA picking up three goals, two penalty kick attempts, 25 shots and nine on target. FCD has a meager 9 shots total, with five on target and one goal.

You could tell late in the match that they looked tired and a bit gassed from the number of games they’ve had to play recently, too. Let’s just move on quickly from this one, shall we?

Man of the Match: Paes ended the night with six saves, including one penalty.

What’s next for FC Dallas: Another game in LA comes up this weekend, as FC Dallas takes on LAFC on Saturday night.

Wayne Gretzky was less than a decade removed from winning four Stanley Cups in Edmonton, so when he took the ice for a puck drop before a Stars-Oilers playoff game at Edmonton Coliseum in the late ‘90s, I watched and listened as delirium ensued.

It’s a bit quieter a generation later when The Great One speaks on the TNT studio broadcast, but when a man has 894 goals and 2,857 points to his credit, you might as well listen. And he didn’t exactly speak to fire up his old Oilers team Wednesday night.

”I think the Stars are gonna sit back in the locker room and say, ‘We don’t want to come back to Edmonton, we win tonight and we take this thing home.’ They’re going to come out hard in the first period,’’ Gretzky said.

Just 5 1/2 minutes into the first period of Game 4, Dallas had grabbed a 2-0 lead. The NHL’s best road team, one that had no trouble limiting high-scoring Colorado to one goal in each of the three games played in Denver the last round, was riding high.

Now The Great One did not have much to say regarding what might come later. And at the end of two periods, the Oilers had outshot Dallas 24-14, held a 4-2 advantage, sent two Stars down the tunnel in the second period — forward Mason Marchment (puck to the face) and defenseman Chris Tanev (puck to the unpadded leg) — and taken charge of Game 4. The Period of the Long Change had become the Period of the Long Series.

Marchment returned for the third period but Tanev, the trade deadline acquisition hailed by many as the best in the league who was so instrumental in keeping Jack Eichel and Nathan MacKinnon from killing this team the first two rounds, did not. As a result, Dallas lost a 5-2 game that included a late empty-netter. The Oilers were the first playoff team to score five unanswered goals on Dallas since Vegas won the Western Conference finals clincher 6-0 in Dallas last May.

Although the series will be tied at 2-2 when the puck drops Friday at the AAC — same as it was for Game 5 against Vegas about a month ago — this has to be a worrisome turn of events. As is so often the case in the Stanley Cup playoffs, all the things we thought we had learned from two straight Dallas wins pretty much got upended at Rogers Place on Wednesday.

Like the Oilers can’t score on the power play. Who cares? Neither can Dallas. And Edmonton took the lead in the middle of the second period on the series’ first special teams goal, a short-handed swipe by former Stars forward Mattias Janmark. When Leon Draisaitl knocked in his 10th goal of the playoffs just 51 seconds later, the Oilers had turned Dallas’ two-goal lead on its head and carried the 4-2 advantage into the final period.

Or like Dallas’ road mystique will carry the club. Suddenly a 6-1 record away from the AAC is a 6-2 record that doesn’t scare anybody in Edmonton.

On this night there was no pushback from the Stars. In Game 3, the Stars had erupted from a 2-0 deficit to strike three times in a span of 3:33 to gain control of the game. In Game 4 … a lot of nothing. Not even any great chances to speak of. Heck, the biggest save of the night was made by Jake Oettinger’s stick after he had completely lost it and it deflected a Connor McDavid shot deep in the crease.

In two nights in Edmonton, the Oilers scored eight goals without a drop from the league’s finest power play. They won Game 1 in Dallas without a power play goal. Although the regular season numbers favor Dallas, we know Edmonton got off to a terrible start the first 20 games before recording the most points in the last three-fourths of the season. The sense that Dallas has the edge in goal with Oettinger over Stuart Skinner still hangs in the air … but it hasn’t always meant much in these Western Conference finals and was completely irrelevant Wednesday.

What comes next? Jason Robertson broke out with a hat trick in Game 3 but Dallas’ top line of Roope Hintz, Tyler Seguin and Robo fired blanks Wednesday night. Nothing has been easy or quick for the Stars, taking seven games to knock off the Golden Knights and another six to vanquish Colorado. This one will go at least six and the dead-even nature of the series suggests the team that’s down after Game 5 will find a way to push on to Game 7.

Maybe then the Stars can ride Pete DeBoer’s 8-0 record in seventh games one more time to reach the Cup Final. History isn’t always the best card to play, but when your scoring and power play are inconsistent and your defense has just taken another hit, you hang onto any cards at your disposal.

On X/Twitter: @TimCowlishaw

Find more Stars coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.