The lessons Kyrie Irving learned under LeBron and in Boston now guide his mentorship of Luka Doncic, who in many ways mirrors the King himself.
LONG BEFORE THESE Dallas Mavericks were someone’s pick to exit the Western Conference, before they beat the LA Clippers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves to reach basketball’s brightest stage for the first time in 13 years, Kyrie Irving had started to reflect on his three years with LeBron James, his time with the Boston Celtics and how those times had changed him.
“Back then I didn’t know how to handle those personalities. I started every day feeling like I had to be better than my teammates,” Irving told ESPN. “We were very, very competitive, and the one thing I always instilled in them when I got there was: stop being afraid to challenge others. That was something we shared as younger players: we wanted to establish ourselves as a great team, that’s how we started “.
He had been careful all season not to create distractions for himself or the Mavericks by revisiting his controversial past. Because as much as Irving’s time in Dallas has offered him a fresh start, it has also been full of mirrors in which to reflect on his career.
His Mavericks co-star, Luka Doncic, is probably the closest facsimile in the NBA, in skill and role, to James, his former Cleveland Cavaliers co-star.
His head coach, Jason Kidd, was one of his basketball idols while growing up in New Jersey.
“My dad took us to see the Nets in the finals when I was in fourth or fifth grade. We sat high up in the nosebleeds,” Irving said. “And seeing that up close, that’s when I went home and wrote in my closet to see it every day: ‘I’m going to the NBA.'”
His general manager in Dallas, Nico Harrison, was one of his trusted business partners at Nike before Harrison left and Irving’s relationship with the company disintegrated.
And in these Finals, he has come face to face with the team he tried, and largely failed, to lead when he was 26 after asking to escape James’ shadow in Cleveland to build his own NBA legacy.
“These guys on the Boston team know my game. They know it well and they’ve been able to plan for me,” Irving said after Game 3 on Wednesday. “Overcoming this obstacle is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Obviously we knew we would have our challenges, but this is what helps us grow.”
Irving struggled against Boston’s larger, physical guards in the first two games in Boston, averaging just 14 points on 35% shooting. He looked uncomfortable as boos rained down from the TD Garden crowd.
The key to getting through it, Irving said after an impressive 38-point Mavs victory in Game 4, was realizing he wasn’t going through this alone. Luka Doncic had also struggled in the series and was being criticized on a level he had never experienced before.
“We are discovering each other in a crazy way during the highest stage of basketball,” Irving said of the series. “It’s a beautiful thing, but it can also be chaotic if you don’t know how to keep your balance.”
Doncic responded in Game 4 with a brilliant and efficient 29 points to lead the Mavs to a blowout victory and extend the series to Game 5 in Boston at 8:30 pm ET.
“This is his first opportunity and his first taste of what it’s like to be on this stage and not play up to your capabilities… where every mistake is magnified,” Irving said of Doncic. “And he responded very well. I expected it. I think a lot of people who have seen Luka and know that Luka expected it. He just didn’t know how it was going to happen. He made some things happen that he was very proud of.”
IRVING STORE to take a lot of time after the game to collect his thoughts, calm down and get dressed before addressing the media. His clothes usually carry a message; her silver feather earring serves as a tribute to her late mother’s Native American heritage.
It’s a stark contrast to the chaos Irving caused on his last three teams.
In 2017, the then 25-year-old asked to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers, wanting to lead a franchise of his own, away from LeBron James. Two years later, after a failed stint at it, he teamed up with Kevin Durant on the Brooklyn Nets, hoping to bring a title to a team he had grown up rooting for. Three tumultuous, controversy-filled years after that, he was the NBA’s persona non grata: a player too talented to ignore, but too attractive to touch. Then, at the 2023 trade deadline, he was traded to Dallas, to team with another alpha superstar: the same type of player that, seven years earlier, Irving felt the need to leave.
Books have been written about James and Irving’s breakup in Cleveland and why Irving asked for a trade the summer after they won a championship together in 2016. Maybe it was a matter of timing, a schism between where each was at. player in his life and career. Perhaps mistakes were made, as James and Irving have suggested in the past.
After much reflection, Irving has come to a different understanding.
“I think there was an unfair expectation at the beginning, when I was (in Cleveland) and (James) was coming back from Miami,” Irving told ESPN. “He was expected to win right away. And then there’s this young man like me, who was a three-time All-Star. All-Star Game MVP. I had my own accolades.
“So there’s confidence there. But being that young, having that confidence, sometimes it can be taken the wrong way if you don’t have the opportunity to know who that person is.”
PLAYING NEXT TO DONCICwhose skill set, body type and basketball IQ rival James’s, has been something of a makeover for Irving.
The ways he learned to play alongside James have helped him thrive and coexist with Doncic. But this time, Irving is the veteran, not “the kid,” as James used to call him. Now the roles have been reversed.
“When you’re in there with another guy who’s a top-five or top-three pick and he’s done it without you,” Irving said. “I think you realize that, I don’t ever want to say you take a backseat, but you just go along for the ride.
“When it’s my time to lead, it’s my time to lead. When it’s (Doncic’s) time to lead, it’s his time to lead. Or when one of these guys in the locker room gets going, you have to allow it and accept it.” instead of rejecting.
“This is his team, he’s been here longer, longer, and he’s built camaraderie with the other guys. So when I come in as a new kid, instead of trying to fit in, it’s like, ‘No, me.’ “Actually, I have to be myself. Show him and then let him guide me too.”
The reasons Dallas was willing to trade for him last season, when his value was at its lowest after a disastrous run with the Nets, were Harrison and Kidd’s prior relationships with Irving, and because he was so successful. next to James.
“They’re very similar,” Kidd told ESPN of Doncic and James, whom he coached as associate head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers in 2020. “They’re very similar, IQ-wise. They’re both off the charts. Luka no no “He has the athleticism that LeBron has, but they do a lot of similar things and they both really know the game.”
Harrison leaned heavily on his personal relationship with Irving.
“I knew him,” Harrison told ESPN. “I knew him since he was 16.”
So the franchise took a leap of faith and trusted that its history with Irving would be enough to make it all work.
What neither Kidd nor Harrison could foresee was how much Irving would influence Doncic.
The Mavs star, who at 25 is the same age Irving was when he asked to leave Cleveland, listens to Irving and seeks his guidance on and off the court.
“He has brought peace of mind to our team and to me,” Doncic told ESPN. “That maturity has been incredible having him on our team. I learn from him every day.”
