The Dallas Mavericks have started the season 7-4, which is a healthy improvement over last season. A lot of Mavericks fans were calling the season over when they went 3-8 through 11 games last year.

It had gotten so bad last year that, with P.J. Washington having a chance to win that 11th game at the free-throw line, fans were chanting to fire Nico Harrison. He was fired soon after, and the Mavericks have overhauled everything since.

The biggest storyline heading into the season was the Mavericks' plans with star guard Kyrie Irving. He was returning from a torn ACL, after missing the entire 2025-26 season while recovering, and every team with a guard need was interested in trading for him.

The Mavericks held off on any trade talks for Irving, saying they weren't interested, and Irving said he addressed it with the locker room.

"I think we heard a lot of the noise before the season and some of the predictions… just because of the roster that we had, no one really sure about where I was going to be, or where our team was going to be, or some of the trade rumors that had continued to circle around our team or circle me," Irving stated after Monday's win over the Indiana Pacers.

"Just distractions, and I think we laid it right there. I let the team know, out of my own mouth, that these trade rumors, anything that’s going on with me, do not let this infiltrate our locker room. Don’t let this get in the way of what we have building here… We should not allow any external distractions or any external voices that don’t support us unconditionally or want to see us do well to infiltrate our locker room, so I think that’s one of the contributing factors."

Kyrie Irving Starting Season Strong

Monday's win over the Pacers was the first time that Kyrie Irving had played in a back-to-back since coming back from the injury.

He played fewer than 30 minutes in Sunday's blowout win over the Brooklyn Nets, which allowed him to play 38 minutes on Monday night, and it helps that they don't play again until Thursday.

Irving scored 35 points on 11/18 shooting in that win over Indiana, including a wildly efficient 7/10 from three.

In the nine games that he's played, Irving has averaged 22.9 PPG and 4.3 APG while being just a hair under 50/40/90. Considering that he's still working his way back from injury at 34 years old, those are really impressive numbers.

As long as the Mavericks continue to win games, and they should win a lot more than they did last season, the plan should be for Irving to stick around in Dallas.

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