Dallas Mavericks point guard Kyrie Irving believes he and Luka Doncic were “too passive with one another” last season. Dallas won just 38 games in 2022-23. The team was only 5-11 in games Doncic and Irving played together. That was the worst winning percentage (.313) for a pair of teammates who were both All-Stars since the ABA-NBA merger in 1976-77, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
Irving said at Mavericks media day that he and Doncic are both “killers” and willing to do whatever it takes to make their partnership work.
“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.
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“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.”
Irving averaged 27.0 points, 5.0 rebounds and 6.0 assists in 20 games with the Mavericks last season. He finished the 2022-23 season with averages of 27.1 points, 5.1 rebounds and 5.5 assists with the Brooklyn Nets and Mavericks.
Irving re-signed with Dallas on a three-year, $126 million contract on the first day of free agency. The NBA champion has a 15% trade kicker in his new contract with the Mavericks. A trade kicker is the percentage of a player’s salary that is awarded as a bonus in the event of a trade.
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Doncic averaged 32.4 points, 8.6 rebounds and 8.0 assists last season. The Mavericks superstar recorded 36 double-doubles and 10 triple-doubles in 66 games.
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