Dallas Basketball

Lakers’ Free Agency Pursuit of Mavs’ Kyrie Irving Over? - ‘That Ship Has Sailed’

The Los Angeles Lakers have experienced a lot of success since the NBA trade deadline despite LeBron James being sidelined. In turn, it appears that they won’t be pushing to sign Dallas Mavericks star point guard Kyrie Irving in free agency anymore.

Dalton Trigg

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As the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers prepare for a Friday-night matchup that has big playoff implications in the Western Conference, the buzz around star guard Kyrie Irving’s free agency has cooled off a little bit since the last time these two teams met.

The Lakers have experienced a great deal of success since the trade deadline despite LeBron James being sidelined for the last nine games. LA is 9-5 since the deadline, while Dallas is just 5-9 in that same span. Given, the Mavs have had more injury misfortune in than the Lakers have, but there’s no doubting that LA has more serviceable depth than Dallas once you get past the star tier.

According to The Athletic’s Jovan Buha, the Lakers are happy with their current group of players and are no longer expected to make a run at Irving in free agency.

“From what I’ve been told, they’re not going to be pursuing Kyrie Irving this offseason… To my knowledge and to what I’ve been told, the Kyrie ship, I think, has sailed,” Buha said as a guest on the latest episode of the HoopsHype Podcast.

“You never want to say never. That could easily change, but as of right now, their plan is to run this (team) back.”

Given James’ public admiration for Irving, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the Lakers’ stance on this situation changes once the summer rolls around. However, Irving has seemingly enjoyed his short time in Dallas despite not being able to string together a bunch of wins alongside Doncic yet.

Some of that is simply due to not having enough time to build chemistry, and some of it is due to unfortunate injuries, as Irving and Doncic have both missed the Mavs’ last three contests. However, if the Lakers are truly out of the Irving free agency sweepstakes, and the Mavs are willing to pay Irving this summer, there is less pressure for Dallas to completely figure things out right now. 

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Dalton Trigg
DALTON TRIGG

Dalton Trigg is the Editor-In-Chief for Dallas Basketball, as well as the Executive Editor overseeing Inside The Rockets, Inside The Spurs, All Knicks, and The Magic Insider. He is the founder and host for the Mavs Step Back Podcast, which is a proud part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Trigg graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi’s College of Business and Economic Development with a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship in 2016. After spending a few years with multiple Dallas Mavericks-related blogs, including SB Nation’s Mavs Moneyball, Trigg joined DallasBasketball.com as a staff writer in 2018 and never looked back. At the start of 2022, he was promoted to the EIC title he holds now. Through the years, Trigg has conducted a handful of high-profile one-on-one interviews to add to his resume — in both writing and podcasting. Some of his biggest interviews have been with Mavs owner Mark Cuban, Mavs GM Nico Harrison, now-retired legend Dirk Nowitzki and many other current/former players and team staffers. Many of those interviews and other articles by Trigg have been aggregated by other well-known sports media websites, such as Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, Bleacher Report and others. You can find Trigg on all major social media channels, but his most prevalent platform is on Twitter. Whether it’s posting links to his DBcom work, live-tweeting Mavs games or merely giving his opinions on things going on with Dallas and the rest of the NBA, the daily content never stops rolling. For any inquiries, please email Dalton@MavsStepBack.com.

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