Kyrie Irving has said he was “happy to come back” to the Mavericks during free agency. Irving and the Mavs signed a three-year, $126 million deal within the first hour of free agency. “It wasn’t too difficult of a process. Had Dallas as number one on my list. Obviously I looked elsewhere — salary cap opportunities, where I could fit in with other guys around the league — but there just wasn’t much space. And me being 31 now, I had to have a different vantage point, and I felt like I could not just settle here but be happy to come back here and be welcomed back with a warm embrace.”
He continued. “So I took everything into account. I took my time a few days before free agency just to be with my family, gauge how they felt about being in Dallas alongside me. And everybody was excited. I mean, even when I got traded here, midseason, a lot of my family was excited and they were just looking forward to me having a peace of mind just on the court and off the court. I had already dealt with enough past season or the past two seasons, so they knew that I just wanted a lot of that off my back and off my shoulders of feeling like I had to be Superman or I had to be perfect. So I think this is the best place to do it and continue to mature and grow as a man.”
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Kyrie And Luka Take 2
However, the Mavs didn’t do a whole lot in the offseason. They mostly added depth around Kyrie and Luka Dončić. They added a fairly exciting rookie in Derek Lively II but other than that, they spent a lot of their resources locking down Kyrie. However, it begs the question – what are the Mavs doing? At best they are a fringe playoff team and the league’s superteams (Denver, Phoenix, GSW, Milwaukee), there doesn’t really feel like a place for the slow-build Mavs.
Despite this, Kyrie has faith. “I think we were being too passive with one another. 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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