Can Kyrie Irving be the Mavs subleader?
This offseason, Kyrie Irving agreed to a three-year, $126 million contract to return to the Dallas Mavericks in what will be a restart for the star point guard’s career.
Irving’s career has had some ups and downs since he left the Cleveland Cavaliers, and he failed to find success with either the Boston Celtics or the Brooklyn Nets.
Now, with Dallas, Irving is looking to prove to the NBA that the Mavs were not wrong to give him the contract and that he can co-star with Luka Doncic.
This offseason, Kyrie Irving agreed to a three-year, $126 million contract to return to the Dallas Mavericks in what will be a restart for the star point guard’s career.
Irving’s career has had some ups and downs since he left the Cleveland Cavaliers, and he failed to find success with either the Boston Celtics or the Brooklyn Nets.
Now, with Dallas, Irving is looking to prove to the NBA that the Mavs were not wrong to give him the contract and that he can co-star with Luka Doncic.
2- A key number or statistic for Kyrie Irving next season.
9.5. Kyrie Irving averaged points in the fourth quarter and overtime last season. According to ESPN Stats & Information, in the past 25 years, only three other players have had that fourth-quarter average in a single season: Russell Westbrook and Isaiah Thomas, both in 2016-17, and Kobe Bryant in 2005-06.
Irving also scored 20-plus points in the fourth quarter in five games, the most by any player in a season since play-by-play was first tracked in 1996-97. With Dallas he did it once, scoring 26 points in the final segment in a 124-121 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on February 13.
In fact, his fourth-quarter production was better under Dallas (9.9), but the Mavericks were 8-12 in his 20 games, including 5-11 when he faced Luka Doncic on the court. According to ESPN Stats & Information, this was the worst record in 10 games by two fellow All-Stars since the NBA-ABA merger.
When you turn down the noise he makes off the court, Irving continues to produce superstar numbers. To refresh your memory, last season he averaged 27.1 points, 5.1 rebounds, 5.5 assists per game on 49.4% shooting from the field, 37.9% on target and 90.5% from the free throw line. He was even better with Dallas (27.0 PPG, 5.0 RPG, 6.0 APG) with spectacular percentages of 51.0 from the field, 39.2 from 3 and 94.7 from the free throw. None of that translated to wins for Jason Kidd’s team, however, whose presence only helped them win 8 of 20 games.
3- Can Irving be part of something good with Doncic in Dallas?
The segment of the 2022-2023 season that Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic share is a first indication of how this duo of stars may or may not work. And the balance tipped to the negative side.
The first impression was that neither of them felt comfortable playing with the other for a simple and essential reason: they both need to have the ball in their hands to develop their game. There were few moments in which they strengthened and took advantage of the capacities of each one for a common good. Instead, there were more where it was unclear who should lead and who should step down or be a great partner.
What did do the Dallas Mavericks good to have Luka and Kyrie on the team was the possibility of not suffering so much from Doncic’s saves and thus being able to dose their playing time. There is one of the solutions, although not definitive because if you have to limit the stars to win, who is going to offer solutions?
The record of 5 wins and 11 losses in the 16 games the two have played since Irving joined the Mavericks indicates that for this experiment to work, something must change in the formula, otherwise it will explode.
