When the NBA world saw Kyrie Irving go down Monday night versus the Sacramento Kings, many feared the worst. Tuesday morning confirmed those fears with reports that Irving has torn his ACL and will miss the rest of the season. Depending on how long he takes to recover, the typical timeframe for ACL tears is 6 to 9 months, he may miss part of 2025-26.
The Dallas Mavericks have sustained brutal injury luck this season. After trading Luka Doncic, who himself had been out since Christmas, they lost Anthony Davis in his first game with Dallas. Both centers, Dereck Lively and Daniel Gafford, remained sidelined.
Before Irving’s injury in the same game, forward PJ Washington sprained his ankle. He is day-to-day. Trade acquisition Caleb Martin has yet to play. For the most part, the team’s health woes have been plain short-straw misfortune. As they say, though, you make your own luck. The way they deployed Kyrie, Dallas had been brewing bad juju for some time.
Preventable or Not, the Dallas Mavericks Share Blame for Kyrie Irving’s Torn ACL
Hindsight is 20-20, but anyone could have seen an injury coming for Irving–not a torn ACL, but something. As it was, he had played much of the season with a bulging disc in his back. Despite this, his 50 games played out of 62 put him on pace for his highest participation rate since playing 67 games in 2018-2019 in Boston.
Since late November, he played fewer than 35 minutes on only five occasions. Recently, his workload had grown even heavier. In fact, he led the league in minutes per game dating back to mid-January at 38.7 a night.
kyrie had played the most minutes in the league for about six weeks straight pic.twitter.com/rL3q6KQh5H
— tim cato (@tim_cato) March 4, 2025
Certainly it did not help that the return piece in the Luka trade, Davis, played all of three quarters before injuring an adductor muscle. With Doncic gone and Davis hurt, Irving supplied the team’s only offensive engine. It was only a matter of time before the Mavs’ house of cards combusted.
Given their lack of options, it is hard to blame them for giving him such heavy minutes, and, competitor that he is, no doubt Irving embraced the challenge. But could Dallas have managed his playing time more wisely, more responsibly? Could the front office have taken steps to mitigate his workload? Two prominent NBA analysts think so.
Top ESPN Reporter Questions Dallas Front Office
Dallas was 19-10 before Doncic hurt his calf on Christmas. Since then, including that game against Minnesota, they have gone 13-20. Despite their struggles, the Mavericks remain 10th in the West three losses ahead of the Phoenix Suns in 11th.
Now, of course, their season is all but over, but given their place in the standings, with the hope that Davis and at least one of Lively or Gafford would return for a playoff push, they had everything to play for. They just didn’t leave themselves any margin for error.
“Setting aside whether you think the Mavericks should have made the Luka Doncic trade,” tweeted ESPN’s Tim Bontemps, “the fact that the Mavericks would make that trade and then not trade for more guard help to avoid putting such a massive burden on Kyrie alone was very odd from the jump.”
While Davis served as Luka’s de facto replacement and may have fit management’s vision for the roster, the move left Irving and Spencer Dinwiddie as Dallas’ only ballhandlers. The starting lineup was reduced to a one-man operation, Irving alongside wings and an undersized frontcourt.
As Bontemps suggests, adding a shot creator at the deadline, even a mid-tier option like the guy they traded for Martin, Quentin Grimes, who put up 44 on Saturday and dished out 9 assists the next game, would have done something, anything, to ease Irving’s workload.
Rachel Nichols Doesn’t Understand It Either
Rachel Nichols, a former ESPN reporter at FOX, was similarly puzzled. “Kyrie tearing his ACL wasn’t inevitable,” Nichols said, “but it wasn’t unimaginable either. Trading away a generational talent in his 20s for a 31-year-old with a significant injury history, then driving your 32-year-old star into the ground despite his own injury history is…extremely confusing.”
Going all-in with a weak hand is rarely a positive EV enterprise in pro sports. Playing Kyrie almost 40 minutes a night, playing him hurt when he already has a lengthy injury record, was a tightrope walk between staying competitive and self-destruction.
“Prayers up for Kyrie Irving,” ex-NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III, whose own promising career was derailed by health problems, tweeted Monday before the specifics of Irving’s injury were known. “Definition of guts and toughness.”
After watching Irving, torn ACL, pain-streaked face and all, hobble to the line to sink his free throws, that’s something all NBA fans can agree on. Regardless of whether Dallas could have prevented his injury with better management, it is unfortunate and downright tragic for Irving, Mavs fans and the league. The whole sports world wishes him a speedy recovery.
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