LeBron James Pressuring Lakers to Pursue Mavs' Kyrie Irving?
DALLAS — Kyrie Irving has an important free agency decision to make this offseason. The 31-year-old wants a long-term deal, but as most veterans value, he surely wants a chance to compete for another championship. The Dallas Mavericks are coming off a 38-44 season and face pressure to push the necessary buttons to position themselves for a high degree of success with Luka Doncic.
Irving is coming off another strong campaign, averaging 26.1 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 5.3 assists in 60 games played. He achieved that production while shooting 49.4 percent from the floor, 37.9 percent from 3-point range, and 90.5 percent on free throws. He was named an NBA All-Star starter in the process and enters free agency as one of the top names set to reach the market.
Irving is eligible to sign a five-year deal worth up to $272.9 million if he was to re-sign with the Mavs. If he chooses to outright sign elsewhere, the largest contract he could sign is a four-year, $201.7 million contract.
For now, it remains to be seen what Irving will ultimately decide regarding his free agency. Between a recent story from Bleacher Report stating a "handshake agreement" was in place before being traded to the Mavs and him recently calling out speculation about media personalities linking him to certain teams, there is a lot floating out there regarding his future.
"I'm a free agent this summer, but I am in no rush to make a decision," Irving said of his free agency. "When [these media personalities] speak on my name and they're talking about potential teams that I'm going to, can y'all please — I respectfully, I'm asking you — stop paying attention to that."
While Irving may plan to take his time before reaching any sort of free agency decision, it won't stop rival teams from preparing to make a pursuit to acquire him. Perhaps one of those teams many will watch for is the Los Angeles Lakers.
According to Bleacher Report, the Lakers are facing pressure from LeBron James to pursue Kyrie Irving during the offseason. Some believe James' comments about retirement were an attempt to influence general manager Rob Pelinka.
"Other NBA sources suggested James was getting an early start on his leverage campaign on the Lakers' front office, attempting to influence GM Rob Pelinka to chase free agent Kyrie Irving, who is still expected by many to re-sign with the Dallas Mavericks," Pincus wrote.
James' desire to reunite with Irving is no secret and surely it's only intensified after going through a full Western Conference Finals run and not having quite enough to avoid getting swept by the Denver Nuggets. When shortcomings have hit the Lakers in the past, the reaction was to make a splash trade for Russell Westbrook.
The messaging from the Lakers since the end of the season has been clear. The front office wants to run it back and build continuity. With many important complementary players reaching free agency like Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, D'Angelo Russell, and Lonnie Walker IV, it would be challenging to balance adding another expensive superstar with retaining talent and satisfying the NBA's hard cap.
“I would say this resoundingly clear, our intentions are to keep our core of young guys together,” Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka said. “We saw incredible growth and achievement by Rui (Hachimura), Austin — I could go down the list — Vando, D’Lo. We have a lot of great young players and we want to do our best to fit the puzzle together...Again, without talking specific players, we’ll do our best to keep this group intact and growing and getting better each year.
The Mavs remain optimistic about their chances of re-signing Irving. As the team that holds his Bird rights, they can exceed the salary cap to re-sign him. If the superstar sought to join a team without the necessary salary cap space, they would need to either create room by offloading major salary, or would need cooperation from Dallas in a sign-and-trade scenario.
In the Lakers' case, keeping James along with Anthony Davis would make pursuing Irving challenging without significant creativity and cooperation from multiple parties. It's especially the case with their goal being to retain Austin Reaves, too. It starts with Irving being willing to take less than a max contract. The pathway would also become much simpler if either Russell or Hachimura had mutual interest to join the Mavs in order to facilitate a sign-and-trade.
The Mavs' thought behind the Irving trade was with the long-term in mind. The Mavs ended up going from ranking fourth in the Western Conference standings at the time of the trade to tumbling out of the play-in picture with a 7-15 finish after the NBA All-Star break. However, a lack of clutch-time chemistry, injuries to both superstars, and an outright depleted supporting cast from what was already a bad defensive team proved to be a costly combination that led to a closing tanking effort.
"I didn’t know if this would be like a magic pill. I don’t think I had any visions of that," Harrison said during his media exit interview. "But I figured it couldn’t be worse than what it was. I also looked at it as a long-term play, not a short-term play."
The Mavs' messaging has been of the belief that talent must be upgraded around Doncic and Irving. They became the only team with multiple NBA All-Star starters and saw impressive results when the two were on the floor offensively without having a full training camp or early season schedule to fully install Irving into the offense or build chemistry as a unit.
“When you have that talented of a player, that talented of two players, I think they work together. I really think it’s the players around them," Harrison said. "I think the players around them kind of knowing their role with having those two guys out on the floor at the same time. I think that’s the thing that we need to work on.”
The emphasis has been the need to improve defensively and on the boards after giving up 116.1 points per 100 possessions (25th) and producing a league-worst 47.1% total rebounding percentage. The main mechanisms to improve the roster will be the 10th overall pick and a 2027 first-round selection — their only future first-round pick eligible to be traded this offseason.
"I think for us going into the offseason, the two biggest things that we need to work on is defense and rebounding," Harrison said. "That's going to be addressed."
When asked by DallasBasketball.com after the NBA Draft Lottery in Chicago, Harrison acknowledged that "both" on-ball defense and rim protection will be needs to address in order to bolster the team's defense. However, while there has been significant speculation about the use of the 10th pick in a trade to address those needs, Dallas still will surely entertain the idea of selecting a prospect.
"I was going to ask you to give me the trade speculation, so maybe I add it to my board," Harrison said. "I don't know anything about the trade rumors. We got to look at every possible scenario, so we'll do that for sure."
The NBA Draft will be held on June 22, which will serve as an important date for offseason activity around the league.
Grant Afseth is a Dallas Mavericks reporter for DallasBasketball.com and an NBA reporter for NBA Analysis Network. He previously covered the Indiana Pacers and NBA for CNHI's Kokomo Tribune and various NBA teams for USA TODAY Sports Media Group. Follow him on Twitter (@grantafseth), Facebook (@grantgafseth), and YouTube (@grantafseth).
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