DALLAS — Cooper Flagg spent his rookie season accomplishing something no NBA player had done in four decades. He led the Dallas Mavericks in points, rebounds, assists, and steals, averaging 21.0 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 4.5 assists over 70 games on his way to winning Rookie of the Year. He did it while Kyrie Irving remained in a rehabilitation clinic, 18 months removed from the NBA game that ended his season.
Irving tore the ACL in his left knee on March 3, 2025, against the Sacramento Kings, the kind of injury that can alter the trajectory of a career at 34. While Flagg was helping turn a 26-win team into something that began to resemble a franchise with a future, Irving was focused on rebuilding the physical foundation that had made him one of the league’s most coveted guards. The two have never shared an NBA court.
That changes on September 29.
ESPN’s Shams Charania has confirmed that Irving is fully healthy. He has been cleared to return, cleared to compete, and cleared to resume the role Dallas envisioned when he signed a three-year extension committing himself to the team’s rebuilding project. That commitment came before Flagg became a Maverick, before Dusty May took over as head coach, and before Masai Ujiri arrived as president alongside general manager Mike Schmitz to reshape the front office.
Irving chose Dallas. Dallas changed while he was away.
“This is about Kyrie being 1000% when he comes back and giving himself the best chance to chase a championship next season,” his agent, Shetellia Riley Irving, said.
The numbers surrounding the partnership are striking. Flagg is 19. Irving is 34. Together, they have played zero minutes of NBA basketball. The Mavericks went 26-56 in 2025-26. Now the organization is betting that putting the two players together can reverse that trajectory — that the chemistry they have developed during private workouts this summer can translate into a partnership capable of surviving an 82-game season, a playoff push, and the sustained scrutiny that will follow both players.
Irving has been playing summer pickup games to ramp up his conditioning and working the court with Flagg in the informal sessions that tell coaching staffs more than any organized workout. Owner Patrick Dumont wants to see the partnership play out. Ujiri and Schmitz want the same. Nobody in Dallas is ending the combination before it has been tested even once.
Flagg’s season was not built on the promise of Irving returning. He carried a losing team and made it matter, the third rookie in 45 years to average 20-plus points, six-plus rebounds, and four-plus assists, joining Michael Jordan and Luka Doncic. Former Mavericks coach Jason Kidd had already drawn comparisons between Flagg and LeBron James, based on the way he reads and controls a game at 19 years old. He was the reason Dallas was worth watching at all last season.
The question now is whether Irving makes Flagg better or makes him secondary. ESPN’s Tim MacMahon has already identified Irving as a potential trade-deadline target for rival teams, noting that his timeline as a 34-year-old returning from a torn ACL does not fit seamlessly alongside a 19-year-old franchise cornerstone building toward a decade of prime years. EH’s look at the players already circling the trade rumor mill before the season starts included Irving as a name rival front offices were monitoring closely. The February trade deadline looms over all of it.
Irving’s camp pushed back on any ambiguity about his commitment. The framing has been consistently championship-focused. But Dallas posted 26 wins last season. The gap between where this team is and where Irving expects to compete is real, and 19 months away from an NBA game has a way of narrowing the window in which a player at 34 can be the primary vehicle for closing it.
The rebuilt Mavericks, with new management, a new head coach, and a franchise player who has never played a game with Irving, open the 2026-27 NBA season with more questions than answers around this roster. Training camp is September 29.
What happened the last time Irving was on the floor, the fall, the knee, the season that stopped for him while it kept going for everyone else, does not dissolve with a medical clearance. Recovery at 34 is not the same as recovery at 28. Shams Charania says he is 100 percent. Irving’s camp says 1000. The math only gets tested when the ball goes up in October.
