Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving: Doncic and I were ‘too passive’ last season
After a slow start to the 2022-23 NBA season after a trip to the Western Conference Finals, the Dallas Mavericks chose to make a bold move ahead of the NBA trade deadline by trading for superstar guard Kyrie Irving in a deal with the Brooklyn Nets.
Unfortunately, even though the blockbuster trade seemed like a game-changer on paper for Dallas, the Mavericks continued to struggle, with Irving and Luka Doncic struggling to figure out how to play with each other. This led to the Mavericks missing the NBA playoffs and a lot of questions about the Kyrie-Luka duo.
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After signing a new deal with the Mavericks, Irving is all-in and talked about what went wrong with him and Doncic last season and how he plans to change that via ESPN.
“I think we were being too passive with one another,” Irving said. “We’re both killers on the court, everybody knows it. We want to win. So we just have to continue to have that consistent mentality together and lead the team as best we can alongside other guys that have experience in this league or young guys that we have to coach even more. So it’s all been a learning experience. It was so quick last year and it was so much pressure on us to win now, win big, and ‘It’s Luka and Kyrie, why can’t you guys win games?’ So we were answering a lot of questions that honestly I don’t think we were ready for.”
A lot of pressure will be on Dallas after the team decided to move forward with this superstar duo, with Irving believing a key to success will be both players staying healthy.
“And health is everything in this league. So us not being 100 percent and going through last season and trying to do the best we could mentally and emotionally and physically, I got to give ourselves some grace and some credit.”
Only time will tell if this duo will work in Dallas, but Irving seems to be optimistic and that he should, considering how talented these two generational players are.
