It’s unusual to hear a team owner say he believed one of his best players was once a “team killer,” so it must be a good thing Mark Cuban is no longer the owner of the Dallas Mavericks because he did that with Kyrie Irving.
Cuban, who sold his majority stake in the Mavericks late last year, said he had been under the impression that Irving was the cause of several teams breaking up before his arrival in Dallas.
“Before I did the work, I thought Kyrie was a team killer,” Cuban said on Shannon Sharpe’s ‘Club Shay Shay’ podcast. “I was like, ‘He’s not going to fit in anywhere.’ I never talked to people about him. There was no point. But when the opportunity to trade for him came up, we did the work. [Mavericks general manager] Nico Harrison knew him, [Mavs head coach] Jason Kidd knew him, and I started talking to people who had played with him. And everybody loved him. Nobody had a bad word to say about Kyrie who had ever stepped on the court with him. That told me what I needed to know.
“He’s misunderstood. He has a heart of gold and just wants to help people. That’s who he is. Look at his social media — it’s all about his tribe and the people around him. Once I saw that, it was easy to make the decision to trade for him.”
Kyrie Irving went from supposed ‘team killer’ to Mavericks leader
Before this season with the Mavericks, who made it to the NBA Finals for the first time since 2011, being a coach or team ‘killer’ was a relatively common characterization of Irving. The former No. 1 overall pick had requested a trade from the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017, a year after winning the franchise’s first NBA title, and then left the Boston Celtics in free agency two years later despite saying planned on re-signing.
With the Brooklyn Nets, Irving was held out of home games for refusing to be vaccinated during the COVID-19 pandemic and later was slapped with a suspension by the team after a social media post about an antisemitic book and film. Irving eventually requested a trade out of Brooklyn after contract extension talks fizzled out, which led him to Dallas, where the initial results were lackluster.
At the time of the trade, the Mavericks were 28-26 and sat in sixth in the Western Conference. The team struggled mightily adjusting to Irving and Luka Doncic playing together, and by the end of the season, the Mavericks were 38-44 and finished in 11th, missing out on the playoffs and Play-In.
Irving and the Mavericks’ 2023-24 season went much better, with Dallas winning 50 games and earning the fifth seed before advancing to the NBA Finals, where the Mavs lost to the Celtics, Irving’s former team.
Be the first to comment