On the night the Los Angeles Lakers advanced past the first round of the playoffs for the first time since their 2020 championship, Kyrie Irving arrived as a spectator.
Sitting courtside in a black baseball cap, with gold lettering that celebrated a historically Black Dallas high school’s second consecutive state football championship this past winter, Irving acknowledged his former teammate LeBron James in the pregame layup lines with a handshake and a hug. When James helped complete the Lakers’ decisive Game 6 victory over Memphis, Irving congratulated him in the arena tunnel.
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The optics, however contrived, were unavoidable given Irving’s looming unrestricted free agency this summer. Here he was, watching a team advance in the postseason just months after it had expressed interest in trading for him — all while his most recent employer, the Dallas Mavericks, had missed the playoffs entirely.
Of course, there’s nothing notable about an out-of-season basketball player attending a basketball game in the city known as this league’s summer home. And no matter how close Irving might be to James, the Lakers are uninterested in pursuing him in free agency, say league sources, who like all unnamed sources in this article were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. To acquire him would require jettisoning several deadline acquisitions who have helped revitalize their season and land them in a second-round series against the Golden State Warriors.
Meanwhile, the Mavericks, team sources say, remain optimistic about their ability to re-sign Irving this summer after trading for him in February with the intention of a long-term partnership with Luka Dončić — and it is, league sources say, the expectation other teams have as well. While Dallas went 5-11 when Dončić and Irving played together, this catastrophic season had begun long before Irving’s arrival. And its ultimate failure, with the team resting starters in the final two games to maximize draft positioning, didn’t shake the team’s belief in what that duo can be.
It’s still remarkable, however, that the Mavericks find themselves in this position just one season after a conference finals appearance. Last summer, the team’s top priority was also re-signing a free agent guard: Jalen Brunson. That they lost him to the New York Knicks on a four-year deal worth $104 million means retaining Irving has even more significance.
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It’s the first step for what the franchise believes must be a meaningful overhaul, team sources say, to correct the many missteps that led to this season of misery, one that ended 38-44 and with Dallas out of the playoffs for the first time since Dončić’s rookie year. The team understands the importance of this summer’s course correction, and it has an appropriate fear that Dončić’s stardom could lead to him requesting out if he were to lose belief in this franchise’s ability to build a title-contending roster around him.
“Some things (have) to change, for sure,” Dončić said after the season’s final game, although he also has provided assurance that there’s “nothing to worry about” in regard to his current belief in remaining with the franchise.
The team’s failure to retain Brunson truly started the cascading chain of events that led to this season’s ultimate collapse, one that a team source succinctly described as a “f—ing disaster.” One player remarked minutes before the season’s final game, “I’m glad it’s over.”
Upon drafting Brunson in 2018, Dallas structured his rookie contract in a manner that made him an unrestricted free agent after his fourth season, something atypical for players in his situation. The Mavs chose not to extend him at four years, $55 million before the 2021-22 season, and the two sides have an on-the-record disagreement regarding whether that same extension was ever available in that season’s opening months.
Team governor Mark Cuban had boasted, shortly after the team’s season concluded in the conference finals, that the Mavericks could “pay (Brunson) more than anyone.” In the days leading up to free agency, Cuban and the team’s decision makers had planned to meet him in New York. They had prepared a “sentimental” video, according to team sources, featuring his accomplishments and community work in Dallas, but the meeting was canceled and the Mavericks understood, in the days leading up to July 1, that Brunson joining the Knicks was inevitable.
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In an unprompted media availability last month, Cuban once again claimed that the team was never provided an opportunity to negotiate with Brunson — something Cuban blamed on Brunson’s father, Rick, who was hired as an assistant coach for the Knicks in May 2022. Brunson’s agents, according to a team source, did inquire about the team’s planned offer in the days leading up to free agency, but Dallas declined to reveal its thinking, saying it would withhold that for the meeting the team ultimately never received.
In the end, it didn’t matter that the meeting never took place. As a league source close to Brunson said, “You always want to feel wanted.” Perhaps only Brunson knows to what extent Dallas’ hesitations to retain him — either by extension or by outbidding the Knicks, which Dallas reportedly did not plan to do even if given the opportunity — affected what was, at that point, his certainty that he would leave for New York.
“I wanted (to be) with the Mavericks for the long haul of my career,” Brunson told Bleacher Report in March. “Obviously, I wish things would’ve happened differently.”
In many ways, Dallas’ disastrous season can be best explained by the team’s over-reliance on Dončić after losing Brunson.
It was a concern Dallas had before the season even began, and it had been decided, team sources said, that Dončić would enter the season with a load management plan after a short summer caused by the extended postseason run and his extensive national team duties for Slovenia. But Dallas quickly realized that the team relied on him to win more than it had imagined.
The Mavericks blew a 22-point lead to the Phoenix Suns in the season-opening defeat, an inauspicious start that quickly turned into a trend of inexplicable losses: to the depleted New Orleans Pelicans, to the Oklahoma City Thunder despite having a 99.9 percent chance to win, and to a Denver Nuggets team missing three starters, including Nikola Jokić.
Strategically resting Dončić against weaker opponents backfired too as Dallas lost all eight of its first such attempts doing so. In the minutes Dončić spent on the court, the Mavericks had the league’s best offense, only for their scoring to plummet beneath the league’s worst teams when he sat. Team sources expressed surprise early in the season at how radically defenses adjusted to him, eschewing traditional pick-and-roll coverages for single or double ones that strained him to create everything for the roster’s limited role players.
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As one team executive joked early in the season, it would be in opponents’ best interests if the entire league committed to wearing down Dončić — forcing him to score 50 points in hopes he would be exhausted by Christmas. Many teams effectively did just that: Dončić needed 51 in a one-point win against the lowly San Antonio Spurs and another 50 to beat the disorganized Houston Rockets.
The team’s primary offseason signings had been centers, but JaVale McGee, who team sources say had been prioritized by coach Jason Kidd, was benched eight games into the season. Another big man, Christian Wood, had arrived in a necessary salary-clearing move. While Wood’s agent, Adam Pensack, launched an aggressive behind-the-scenes campaign to media members for his client to be considered an All-Star, team sources said Dallas’ coaching staff never shared that same belief, which led to his inconsistent role.
When Dončić played, Dallas always had a chance — such as his historic 60-point performance against the Knicks, one that spawned Dončić’s memeable postgame quote about needing a “recovery beer” after carrying his team to an improbable overtime win. (“An IPA,” he told The Athletic later that week, “Just one, and then I went to sleep.”) His remarkable performance took the place of what was supposed to be Brunson’s return to Dallas, and although Brunson missed that particular game, it had already become increasingly clear that season how much Dallas missed him.
Enter Irving.
When the Brooklyn Nets suspended him in November for endorsing a film with antisemitic views to his social media and repeatedly refusing to apologize, some within the Mavericks organization immediately saw it as an opportunity, according to team sources, to acquire him for a cheaper asking price than might be expected of a player of his talent.
Dallas anticipated Irving might request a trade, and three months later added him to the roster at the cost of a 2029 first-round pick as well as Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith, Dončić’s closest friend on the roster.
The front office viewed it as a long-term play, although it hoped for better short-term results. The stout defensive identity from the prior season had regressed, something Irving couldn’t help combat. Nor could he completely fix the offense’s reliance on 3-point shooting. Near season’s end, Dallas inexplicably lost back-to-back games to the Charlotte Hornets, one of the Eastern Conference’s worst team, with Kidd describing the team’s performance as “dog s—.” Doncic admitted to dealing with undisclosed off-court issues, saying, “Sometimes, I don’t feel like it’s me out there. I used to have fun, be smiling on the court, but it’s just been so frustrating for a lot of reasons.”
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Ever since the 2011 championship, Dallas has been riddled with failed free agency pursuits, flawed internal power dynamics, cultural transgressions and failed trades that led to roster-wide talent drain — even as the acquisition of Dončić in 2018 gave the franchise another star to take Dirk Nowitzki’s place.
Yet, the Mavs believe Irving’s long-standing relationships with Kidd and Nico Harrison, the team’s general manager who worked with Irving for years at Nike, can entice him to return. If given a maximum contract, Irving would have a first-year salary of approximately $46.9 million — more than twice what Brunson walked for just last summer.
“I wish (Kyrie) can still be here (next season),” Dončić said in his final interview this season, affirming what team sources have described as an excitement for the duo’s potential long-term partnership. Irving’s offseason desires are less clear — he declined to speak to the media after the season’s final game and hasn’t spoken publicly since — even if it remains likeliest he returns.
The uncertainty around Irving comes during an offseason where it’s expected that every player under contract — other than Dončić, of course — could be available in trade discussions as well as the team’s 10th selection, which Dallas has a 79.8 percent chance to retain at the league’s draft lottery on May 16.
It’s a delicate team-building undertaking that must be executed despite the team’s relatively limited number of appealing players and draft picks, with two league sources naming Tim Hardaway Jr., who has a declining contract, and the team’s two young prospects, Josh Green and Jaden Hardy, as the only players who are seen with clear positive value around the league.
Dallas’ offseason priorities, Harrison said at his exit interview, is to add players who can defend and rebound. Two of the team’s underwhelming big man rotation, Wood and Dwight Powell, are out of contract — and Wood, team sources say, is, unsurprisingly, not expected to be back. Maxi Kleber and McGee both showed age-related decline, although Dallas hopes that Kleber, 31, can bounce back with a full offseason to recover from midseason hamstring surgery.
The team’s depth at wing, a strength during its conference finals run, is depleted as well. Finney-Smith was traded in the Irving deal and 32-year-old Reggie Bullock, entering the final year of his contract if Dallas chooses to fully guarantee it, was less effective. While Green, drafted in the first-round in 2020, played his best stretches of basketball this season, he still suffered from the inconsistencies of a young player.
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Beyond that, Dallas could trade Hardaway — who the team explored moving in the past two seasons, team sources say — given his team-friendly deal that boosts his league-wide value. It’s possible that Hardy, a similarly molded scoring guard, could prove ready for that role in his second season.
But the Mavericks desperately need better players, ones who can improve the team’s 23rd-best defense and 18th-best rebounding unit last season, areas where Irving cannot help them. And even re-signing Irving, if it occurs, comes with availability concerns for the 31-year-old guard who has missed time for on- and off-court reasons.
League sources, when asked for reasons that the Mavericks’ planned restructuring this summer could work, point to the league-wide expectation that there may be significant player movement from a number of contending hopefuls. If every roster is experiencing turmoil, it seems likelier that the Mavericks could make smart transactions to acquire what they’re missing in a manner that a late lottery selection or the team’s limited cap space wouldn’t allow.
Some names that have been floated as possibilities include the Phoenix Suns’ Deandre Ayton and the Milwaukee Bucks’ Khris Middleton. But whether either party has mutual interest, or whether Dallas has the resources to acquire them, won’t be answered until this summer.
If there’s any other glimmer of hope from the miserable season that was, it’s how clearly it exposed the team’s flaws, one team executive said in a late-season conversation. That another season, where the team had been luckier, might not have sparked such conviction in meaningful change.
“I saw this coming a long time ago,” one former team employee said, “but I didn’t expect it to be this bad.”
Jovan Buha contributed to this report.
(Photo illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Tim Heitman, Rob Jenkins, Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
