A cursed season continues for the Mavericks with more bad news
Kyrie Irving has a torn ACL in his left knee, and his season is over. The Mavericks season from hell somehow got even worse.
ESPN’s Shams Charania first reported the news Tuesday morning, before being confirmed by local Mavericks reporters. Not only will Irving miss the rest of this season and any playoff games, but he’ll also miss some of next season as well.
Irving suffered the injury in the first half of Monday’s game against the Sacramento Kings. Irving was fouled on a drive to the basket and when he landed he awkwardly planted his left leg, severely hyperextending the knee. After falling to the floor in pain, Irving was helped up by his teammates and trainers and went ahead and shot the two free throws. He made both, and then was helped to the locker room putting very little weight on his left leg.
The recovery timeline for torn ACLs is typically eight to 12 months, which on the optimistic side would mean Irving could return around Christmas later this year. However Irving will turn 33 this month, and has already had two knee surgeries to his left knee in the past, once in 2015 after fracturing his left knee cap in the 2015 NBA Finals, then a follow-up surgery in 2018 addressing issues from the first surgery. A more cautious prognosis would be Irving returning sometime after next season’s All-Star break.
This is obviously devastating news on numerous fronts. For Kyrie personally, this is an awful blow while he was enjoying a great individual season. Irving is a small guard over 30 — these type of major injuries are historically just awful for the careers of players like Irving. For the Mavericks, their season is effectively over. Anthony Davis, Dereck Lively, Daniel Gafford, and PJ Washington are all out with injuries with no clear timeline on when either of those players return. That means the Mavericks for the foreseeable future will be without five of their best six players. Davis is reportedly the closest to returning, and all three centers will be reevaluated on Thursday, but even then, the Mavericks have almost zero offensive creation now without Irving, as the Mavericks traded Luka Doncic to acquire Davis last month.
Beyond this season, the ripple effects continue. Irving has a player-option this summer, and reportedly was going to opt-out and sign a longer-term deal with the Mavericks. Now that decision is up in the air. Kevin Durant is a reported popular trade target for Dallas this summer, the logical conclusion to general manager Nico Harrison’s vision of reassembling a 2016 Nike true-hooper All-Star team with Irving and Davis. Does this injury throw that plan for a loop? Would Durant still want to force a trade to Dallas this offseason if Irving isn’t available for most of next season? There are so many questions that need to be answered now, making an already cloudy Mavericks future even murkier.
At the end of the day, this is another blow to a fan base that has been consistently rocked by bad news since the trading of Doncic last month. Just a terrible, no-good, very-bad season, which seemed so improbable after the joyous NBA Finals run less than 12 months ago. Good grief.