Kyrie Irving has been shipped out of Brooklyn in a deal involving three other players and three future draft picks with Dallas Mavericks taking a punt on the NBA’s most unpredictable star.
The All-Star guard will join the Mavericks for the rest of the season after the franchise agreed to a deal just days out from the NBA trade deadline after Irving told the Nets he wanted out.
He is a free agent at the end of this season so Dallas are no guarantee to retain his services long term.
However, he could form a potent backcourt duo with their superstar, Luka Doncic, as they try to finish the season with a flurry – they are 28-26 in sixth spot in the Western Conference but are only three wins away from third spot in the congested standings.
Kyrie Irving (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
The Mavs also receive veteran power forward Markieff Morris in the deal while guard Spencer Dinwiddie returns to Brooklyn with Dallas defensive stopper Dorian Finney-Smith with the Nets also pocketing a 2029 first-round pick and second-rounders in ’27 and ’29.
Irving’s tenure with the Nets included dozens of missed games due in part to his refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and he also missed games this year after promoting an anti-Semitic documentary.
Irving, who has averaged 27.1 points, 5.3 assists and 5.1 rebounds over 40 games during the 2022-23 campaign, faced heavy criticism earlier this season for promoting a film that he later said contained “false anti-Semitic statements”.
Prior to his apology, the Nets suspended Irving for at least five games, saying that despite holding two news conferences, he had refused to disavow anti-Semitism. He ended up missing eight games.
That followed a 2021-22 season during which Irving played only 29 of the Nets’ 82 regular-season games as he refused to comply with New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Irving was selected with the first overall pick of the 2011 NBA Draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he spent six seasons before being traded to the Boston Celtics.
The Nets signed Irving in mid-2019 to a four-year deal with hopes that he and Kevin Durant could bring an NBA championship to Brooklyn, but the best the duo could do was a second round appearance in the 2021 play-offs.
Irving was eligible for a contract extension, but the Nets refused to give him one last summer.
His agent and stepmother, Shetellia Irving, told Bleacher Report last week she had reached out to the Nets regarding a new deal.
Kyrie could have been offered a four-year contract worth as much as $US200 million ($A289 million).
“I have reached out to the Nets regarding this,” Shetellia Irving told Bleacher Report. “We have had no significant conversations to date. The desire is to make Brooklyn home, with the right type of extension, which means the ball is in the Nets’ court to communicate now if their desire is the same.”
Irving and the Nets were thought to be moving toward a long-term extension in 2021, when Kevin Durant signed.
Instead, Irving proved himself to be unreliable, missing games for reasons unrelated to basketball, changing the Nets’ thoughts about locking into a lengthy future with the point guard.
A tweet was posted to Irving’s account shortly before the first reports of the trade request came out.
“To my Peers: JUST BE YOURSelf and GROW! Keep people around who CELEBRATE YOU unconditionally and appreciates all of the hard work that gets put in. Distance yourself from the folks who manipulate, hate, and hurt,” read the tweet.
Brooklyn are 32-20 this season, fourth in the Eastern Conference standings, and have gone 5-7 since fellow All-Star Durant hurt his knee in a game at Miami on January 8.
Irving was playing well in Durant’s absence, averaging 30.3 points in the last 10 games. Teams were reluctant to make a deal for Irving last summer, when he acknowledged he didn’t find much of a market because of his perceived unreliability.
Luka Doncic. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Durant also had asked the Nets for a trade this past summer, before cooler heads prevailed. And it was at this time last year that Brooklyn traded James Harden, who was part of what the Nets thought would be a Big Three of him, Durant and Irving to the Philadelphia 76ers in a deal that brought Australian Ben Simmons to Brooklyn.
Irving was suspended by the Nets for what became eight games earlier this season after the team was dismayed by his repeated failure to “unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs.”
That came shortly after Irving refused to issue the apology NBA Commissioner Adam Silver sought for posting a link to an antisemitic work on his Twitter feed.
Irving also wound up losing his long relationship with Nike as part of the massive fallout from what he tweeted and the reactions that followed.
Irving also missed much of the 2021-22 season because of his refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19, which left him ineligible to play in Brooklyn’s home games for much of the season because of New York City rules put in place in response to the pandemic.
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