Kyrie Irving’s long road back from an ACL tear has finally reached the point where he’ll get into game action again - but only once this weekend in Macao.
Mavericks head coach Dusty May told reporters, including Christian Clark of The Athletic, that Irving will play in one of Dallas’ two games against Houston, though the team has not decided whether that will be Friday or Sunday. May said the club is still sorting through how Irving’s body responds after the trip and the jet lag.
“We will have a limited roster,” May said on Thursday. “Even with Kyrie, he is going to play one game here.
We still haven’t decided which one. Based on how his body feels, especially with the jet lag and things like that.
It’s still inconclusive at this time. We are working on different lineup combinations.
But as of now, we are still not sure.”
Irving originally tore his ACL in March 2025, and there had been some expectation he could return in the second half of the 2025/26 season. But with the Mavericks out of playoff contention, there was no push to rush him back, and the two sides opted to wait until the fall.
Irving also disclosed Thursday that his rehab hit another snag along the way. He said he suffered a Grade 2 calf strain last December, which kept him from moving forward in the recovery process for about eight weeks.
“It pushed my timeline back even more,” Irving said, per Clark. “I had to take my time to heal.”
Elsewhere in the Southwest, Grizzlies center Zach Edey got back on the floor Wednesday for the first time since December 2025. Head coach Tumoas Iisalo called him “very rusty,” but the bigger picture mattered more for Memphis after ankle problems limited Edey to just 11 games last season, according to Damichael Cole of The Memphis Commercial Appeal.
Edey said he was ready for the moment and felt good physically, even if the sharpness wasn’t all the way there yet.
“What it’s been, like nine months?” Edey said after the game.
“I was ready to go. … I felt good moving around.
I felt good laterally and jumping. My timing might have been a little bit off.
My wind wasn’t fully there, but I felt good moving for sure.”
In Houston, Ime Udoka’s run as head coach has already produced a major turnaround. The Rockets went 59-177 in the three seasons before he arrived, and they’ve gone 145-101 under him. Still, William Guillory of The Athletic writes that the next year or two will help answer a bigger question: whether Udoka is the coach who can take Houston to the next level in the postseason.
Guillory doesn’t frame 2026/27 as a make-or-break season, but the Rockets will want to see clear growth after back-to-back first-round playoff exits.
And Varun Shankar of The Houston Chronicle looked at the impact of shooting coach Chip Engelland, who is working with Alperen Sengun and Amen Thompson. Udoka knows Engelland well from their time together in San Antonio and has praised his approach, saying the veteran assistant “really breaks [shooting] down to a science” and has “a special eye for it.”
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The challenge, of course, is what a deal like that would actually cost. Any serious pursuit would force the Rockets to weigh the value of their current young core against the chance to add a proven star, and that is where the real tension starts. Houston has the assets to make noise, but whether it would be willing to part with the kind of player New York would surely demand is the part that keeps this from being a simple fit-and-forget trade idea. [Read more 🡒]