3 Mavericks on hottest trade candidate seats entering 2026-27 NBA training camp

It seems terrible for the Mavericks to entertain the idea of having to trade Kyrie Irving away. After all, it’s the franchise’s confidence in Irving to be the lead guard that encouraged them to trade Doncic in the first place.

Moreover, they waited patiently for his return from a torn ACL, and he looks ready to get back to being at his best now that the dust has settled on the major transition the Mavs roster went through from the last time he suited up on an NBA court.

The Mavs clearly needed Irving last season as they rotated through a huge cast of point guards whom they looked to for some assurance in that role. None of those players stuck around. Brandon Williams is with the Golden State Warriors now. Ryan Nembhard, who had quite the feel-good story last season, was traded to the Atlanta Hawks in the Zaccharie Risacher deal.

Even with Irving coming off a torn ACL, he’s better than any of the Mavericks’ options at that position. The team’s other point guard options, Marcus Sasser and rookie Sergio de Larrea, are most certainly not the answer at the position quite yet.

Dallas would most certainly would want to see how Irving and Flagg play off of each other, especially with a new brain trust at the helm. Mavs president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri knows the value of having quality veterans raise the overall level of play of a rebuilding team.

Suffice to say, the Mavs shouldn’t be in a hurry to shop Irving around. But there are some concerns the team has to take into consideration.

For starters, Irving is coming off a knee injury, and while modern medicine has advanced to the point where professional athletes can come back from these long-term injuries as if nothing had happened to them, history has not been kind to guards who suffer such injuries.

Moreover, Irving is already 34 years of age (he’ll be turning 35 in March), and there’s always the concern that the combination of his injury history and him being on the wrong side of the aging curve would mean that a decline may be in the near future.

There’s also the fact that Irving may not be a fit for the Mavs’ contending timeline. It’s not quite clear when Dallas will return to winning ways. Maybe Irving would want to latch on with a contender. He’s also approaching free agency (he has a player option worth $42.4 million), and the Mavs may want to get ahead of that situation by trading him to recoup some assets.