Trade Growing Pains: Kyrie Irving, Mavs Feeling Pressure to Perform?
Kyrie #Kyrie
As the Luka Doncic-Kyrie Irving duo has struggled out the gate, all eyes are on Dallas Mavericks heading into the postseason. … That is, assuming they get there.
The first handful of games of the Luka Doncic-Kyrie Irving era hasn’t gone as planned for the Dallas Mavericks.
Dallas is just 1-4 through the first five games played with both Doncic and Irving on the floor. The Mavs are also coming off a disappointing loss to former coach Rick Carlisle’s Indiana Pacers on Tuesday, where Irving missed the potential game-winning 3-pointer in the closing seconds.
For Irving, he knows that Dallas is at a disadvantage when it comes to ‘learning curves’ this late in the season, which has the league’s ‘glaring eye’ on the Mavericks going forward.
“Usually these learning curves and learning moments happen in preseason, but it’s happening now,” Irving said following Tuesday’s loss.
“It puts a glaring eye on what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong, easy to criticize but for us, I just got to focus on being the best that I can be. I got to focus on showing up, not just for Luka, but for my teammates.”
He’s right — it’s easy to pinpoint what‘s going wrong for this new-look roster that has played just a few games together. But, with talents as big as Doncic and Irving, the basketball world expects them to figure things out quickly. If they can’t, the vultures will eagerly start circling.
Overall, the offensive numbers have been impressive since Irving has joined the Mavs, despite a few hiccups in late game situations. Defensively, though, the team has taken a hit, and it looks like a serious issue going forward … an issue that having two of the best scorers in the league might not even be able to make up for.
For Irving and the Mavericks, the pressure has been turned up a couple of notches, not just the remainder of this season, but for the upcoming offseason, as well.
“I really want to win here,” Irving said. “[I] really put a lot of pressure on myself, at times. I think I need to scale it back a little bit.”
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