Kyrie Irving and Cooper Flagg Finally Share a Floor — Dallas Has to Make It Count

For 16 months, the Dallas Mavericks have been a team with a hole in the middle of it. Kyrie Irving tore the ACL in his left knee on March 3, 2025, missed the entire 2025-26 season, and Dallas responded by winning 26 games and fielding a roster that barely resembled an NBA backcourt.

That's why the most meaningful Mavericks development of the past week isn't a trade rumor or a power ranking. It's a workout. Irving was spotted leading Cooper Flagg and several teammates through an on-court session in Santa Monica, the clearest sign yet that the two are finally building real chemistry ahead of a season in which they'll share the floor for the first time.

What Dallas actually has

Flagg's rookie season was the rare bright spot in a lost year: 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists across 70 games, on 46.8% shooting — all while carrying a team with no functioning lead guard. He closed the season on a tear, averaging 25.6 points over his final 10 games, a stretch that included a 51-point eruption in early April and a 45-point night two days later. He won Rookie of the Year for it.

Now imagine that player operating next to a healthy Irving rather than the patchwork Dallas ran out last winter. The fit logic is straightforward. Irving's gravity and pull-up shooting force defenders to make decisions they weren't making against last year's version of the Mavericks, and that should generate cleaner driving lanes and easier catch-and-shoot looks for a sophomore who shot just 29.5% from three as a rookie.

The complications are real

None of this is frictionless. Irving turns 34 this season and is coming off the most serious injury of his career, so the Mavericks have to manage his workload rather than lean on him for 36 minutes a night. The frontcourt remains crowded — P.J. Washington, Daniel Gafford and the newly acquired Zaccharie Risacher all need minutes, and new head coach Dusty May inherited that logjam before he'd even run a practice. And with Masai Ujiri now running basketball operations and Mike Schmitz installed as general manager, there's an active trade market around this roster; multiple outlets have already flagged Dallas players as likely candidates to move.

The bigger-picture math is unforgiving. Dallas finished last season 23rd in the league in net rating at minus-5.4, and the broader market sees only a modest step forward — one book has the Mavericks' season win total at 34.5, which would represent roughly a nine-win improvement. That's a reasonable bar for a team adding a healthy Irving and a second-year leap from Flagg, but it also implies the playoffs are a genuine long shot rather than an expectation.

The schedule won't help early

The Mavericks open on the road at Houston on Oct. 21, then return home for San Antonio on Oct. 24 — two of the tougher early tests on a slate analysts have already described as a brutal opening stretch. If Dallas is going to be better than the market thinks, it will have to prove it fast, against good teams, with Irving managing a knee that hasn't absorbed NBA contact in a year and a half.

The optimistic case writes itself: Flagg takes another leap, Irving stays upright, and the Mavericks are a competent, competitive team a year ahead of schedule. The pessimistic case is just as familiar to anyone who watched last season — one injury, one slow start, and the trade chatter that's already swirling around this roster becomes the story again.

Either way, the Irving-Flagg partnership is finally real. After a year of waiting, that alone is the most compelling thing happening in Dallas.