Kyrie Irving’s future in Dallas may come down to one brutal checkpoint: the trade deadline.
For now, Irving remains a Maverick, and he could still be there for a while. But the chatter around the 34-year-old guard is not going away, and ESPN’s Tim McMahon made that clear by floating the idea that Irving could be moved if Dallas is stuck in the same kind of rough spot by midseason.
On an episode of the Hoop Collective with Brian Windhorst, McMahon said, "I'm fascinated just to see… I'm open-minded to, midseason, Kyrie Irving coming to the Mavericks and saying, 'Hey, I would like to go somewhere where I have a chance to contend right now and here's my list of teams.' And I think that might be in the best interest of everybody."
That line gets right to the tension hanging over Dallas. The Mavericks are building around 19-year-old phenom Cooper Flagg, and Irving doesn’t exactly fit the long-term timeline in the same way. It’s the kind of reality teams don’t love talking about out loud, but it’s sitting right there.
If Dallas is again buried in the standings when the deadline arrives, the front office could explore options. McMahon also suggested the other side of that scenario: Irving himself could ask to be dealt if the season isn’t going anywhere.
That possibility doesn’t feel far-fetched when you look at where both sides are headed.
Last season, Dallas was 21-36 at the trade deadline and sitting 12th in the Western Conference. The finish wasn’t any kinder. The Mavericks closed at 26-56 and stayed in 12th place.
This year doesn’t promise a quick escape. The Western Conference is still a grind, and Dallas enters the season as a team in transition.
It has youth, a first-time NBA head coach, and plenty of figuring out to do around Flagg. That’s not the profile of a club ready to jump into true contention.
Irving, meanwhile, is 34 and turns 35 next March. He’s a former All-Star with a significant injury history, and that makes the timeline even more delicate. The question is how long he wants to spend on a team that is still chasing the basic goal of being a playoff team, much less a winner.
So McMahon’s idea isn’t outlandish at all. If Dallas is underwhelming in the first half of the season, the trade deadline could become the point where the whole Irving conversation changes fast.
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