DALLAS — Before every game, Kyrie Irving was the first Maverick on the court, his face expressionless, red Beats covering his ears to dull ambient noise with soothing melody.
So synchronized were his mind and body that he predetermined precisely how many minutes he needed to warm up. Sometimes it was 17, or 21, or 23, but he never deviated from his internal timer.
Such was the exacting self-discipline that has characterized Irving-the-player’s 61 days as a Maverick, but he’s acutely aware that it’s the team’s sloppy 9-17 record since his Feb. 7 acquisition from Brooklyn that so far defines Dallas’ dicey Irving Experiment.
Nationally, Irving is regarded as a polarizing athlete, but his North Texas arrival and pairing with co-superstar Luka Doncic energized the Mavericks and their fan base and injected hope into a stagnant season.
But now, unfathomably, Dallas’ season will unceremoniously end with an Easter Sunday whimper. It will end with Irving and Doncic in street clothes. It will end beneath the ominous specter that Irving perhaps has played his last game as a Maverick.
As if Dallas’ plummet from last season’s Western Conference finals to 11th place weren’t concerning enough to fans, it’s distinctly possible that Irving will leave this summer in free agency, that his acquisition will have gutted the franchise of valuable resources for, well, nothing.
If that scenario becomes reality, how will the Mavericks rebuild? Above all, what effect might the fallout have on the patience of uber-competitive, 24-year-old face-of-the-franchise Doncic?
In short, the franchise’s immediate and long-term futures soon will hinge on Irving’s mindset and the pocketbook of Mavericks governor Mark Cuban.
“I want him to stay, for sure, and I think we have a good shot,” Cuban said. “I think he’s happy here. He tells me he’s happy here. All I can tell you is everything I thought I knew about Kyrie because of everything I read is 100% wrong.”
Preconceptions are somewhat understandable because of Irving’s messy exits at each of his three previous NBA stops: Cleveland, Boston and Brooklyn.
If Sunday proves to be the last game with Irving on the Mavericks, his tenure will have been drama-free, from all accounts and appearances.
At every home and away game, every practice, every shootaround, every interview session these past two months, Irving’s play and interactions with teammates and reporters alike has appeared to be sterling.
He’s seemed personally invested. Building relationships, not preparing to potentially say goodbye. It was Irving, though, who a few days ago described the challenge of being half of a rushed marriage in which the other half consists of not only a spouse but also in-laws and extended family.
“I’m trying to introduce myself to everybody, figure out who the guys go to on the team to confide in off the court,” he said. “Who is our coaching staff as people? Upper management, who are they as people? What do they expect from me?”
Without pausing, he turned to the elephant in the room, the one that in reality will loom over the Mavericks until Irving’s contract status is resolved this summer.
“The big question: Why they traded for me and what does it look like for the future,” he said. “That’s the big question: What does our future look like?”
The answer probably will be determined by an even bigger one: How much will Cuban need to pay to keep Irving?
He is eligible to receive up to a five-year, $272 million contract from Dallas or up to a four-year, $201.7 million deal elsewhere.
On one hand, those are the going rates for an eight-time All-Star and one of this generation’s most electric, multiskilled guards. On the other, that’s a colossal salary cap allotment for a 31-year-old who in the last four seasons has played in only 163 of a potential 305 games, including 20 of 27 as a Maverick.
“I don’t know,” Cuban said when asked whether another team could outbid Dallas, with fans mindful that the Mavericks last summer lost free agent Jalen Brunson to New York. “I guess there’s always too high of a price, depending, but now with the new [collective bargaining agreement] it’s a different world.”
Finding peace
In postgame interviews and casual conversation, Irving frequently speaks of peace.
Peace for his family. Peace for his legion of fans, whom he calls his tribe. And world peace.
The peace Irving found to be most elusive this season was his own, as he described to his tribe during an emotional 67-minute Twitch stream in March.
“Things happen,” Irving said that night. “A lot has happened in the world. A lot has happened to me. Specifically I’ve had to, shoot, grow. It hasn’t been perfect. It hasn’t been easy, but persevering through it all.”
Irving was vaguely alluding to the blowback he received early this season in Brooklyn after he posted a link to a documentary with antisemitic material. When he initially declined to say whether he had antisemitic beliefs, the Nets suspended him, declaring him “unfit to be associated” with the team.
He lost his Nike sponsorship and shoe deal and the fallout continued even after he apologized, disavowed antisemitism and returned to the court. When contract extension talks with the Nets fizzled, he demanded a trade.
The Twitch stream was broadcast on his 31st day as a Maverick. By then there were strong signs Irving was finding peace within the cocoon of the Mavericks organization and on the court, despite the team’s struggles.
Those in the Mavericks organization who are closest to Irving say the weight seemed to have lifted from his shoulders the moment he joined the Mavericks in Los Angeles on Feb. 7, practicing with them at USC less than an hour after landing.
There was considerable personal familiarity. Irving has a long relationship with Mavericks general manager and former Nike executive Nico Harrison. He is close to guard and former Nets teammate Theo Pinson and to assistant coaches Jared Dudley and Kristi Toliver.
Perhaps most meaningfully, while growing up in West Orange, N.J., Irving idolized not one, but two point guards who were now his coaches — head coach Jason Kidd and Mavericks assistant God Shammgod, who is regarded as a prince in the proud aristocracy of New York City-produced point guards.
Shammgod is a longtime friend of Irving’s father, Drederick; and godfather, Rod Strickland.
In several respects, Irving said, he felt instantly connected with the Mavericks the moment he learned of the trade while playing a pickup game in West Orange. But when he arrived in Los Angeles, the ties resonated even more so.
“Man, I feel like I’m here with my uncle,” he told Shammgod with a laugh.
“Man,” replied Shammgod, “it’s great for you to be here because you’re family.”
For Shammgod it was a full-circle, New York City-point-guard moment. When Shammgod arrived in Washington as a second-round draft pick in 1997, the first player to greet him was Wizards point guard Strickland.
“Man,” Strickland said, “I got like a thousand messages from people in New York, everybody saying to take care of you.”
And on Feb. 7, Shammgod got countless text messages expressing the same sentiment. It’s a New York thing, Shammgod said, an insulating brotherhood.
New Yorkers in general and the point guard fraternity in particular, Shammgod said, communicate with authenticity.
It’s probably no coincidence that Irving has worn jersey No. 2 as a Maverick, the same number point guard Kidd wore while guiding the Mavericks to the 2011 NBA title, and the number Shammgod wore as a pro.
“He knows me, being from New York, he’s always going to get the straight truth,” Shammgod said. “So when you’re around things like that, it just gives you a sense of peace. That’s all anyone searches for is peace.”
Late Friday night, after the Mavericks’ home loss to Chicago mathematically eliminated them from the postseason, Kidd used the same word when asked whether Irving views the franchise’s culture as a positive, wins and losses aside.
“I think he’s enjoyed his time here,” Kidd said. “I think he’s at peace. I think he has enjoyed being a Maverick. And I think, and hopefully I’m not talking out of turn, that he wants to be here.”
Is Kidd confident Irving will return?
“If I was a betting man, I guess I would say he will be back,” Kidd said. “Why would I say he wouldn’t? Confident? That’s too strong. I think we hope. I think Cuban made that the No. 1 priority, to have him come back, so I would second that.”
Unclear feelings
Irving clearly has relished this chance to play for Kidd, who was starring for the then-New Jersey Nets in the early 2000s when grade-school-age Irving’s love of the NBA was taking root.
“It’s been an interesting journey just because I’ve gotten to get to know him as a person for the first time,” Irving said.
“It just feels good when somebody that’s put in the amount of work that you have, and already etched their name in the history books, gives you some strong advice when you’re out there.
“Especially when you need it most.”
Irving’s feelings on the topic of remaining a Maverick are much less clear.
During his introductory news conference in Dallas two months ago, he asked reporters to refrain from asking him that until after the season because he didn’t want the issue to be a distraction for himself or teammates.
Dallas-Fort Worth reporters have honored that request, a professional courtesy Irving probably wouldn’t have gotten in some media markets, particularly New York.
No doubt, though, Irving will be asked The Question minutes after Sunday’s season finale. Not because Irving is likely to declare his feelings one way or the other, but because it’s one of the most pivotal questions in the franchise’s 43-year history, certainly in the last decade.
“Me and Kai talk a lot; we have good communication between each other,” Pinson said. “He likes it here. It’s more about people, surrounding yourself with good people.
“When you’re going through tough situations like this and you can come into the gym and you’ve got Sham and Coach Kidd, you got me and you’ve got Duds and KT, people he’s known for a long time and basketball minds ... even though it’s been tough, coming to work every day is a joy.
“I think that’s one thing that will help the Mavs a lot in pursuing him this summer.”
Perhaps that observation will be of comfort to some Mavericks fans, but it probably doesn’t lessen the ominous feeling many fans will have during Sunday’s finale of a lost season and its potential seismic fallout.
Has Irving found enough peace in Dallas to want to remain a Maverick, with, of course, some monetary encouragement from Cuban?
As Irving already has told us, that’s the Big Question.
