{"id":747992,"date":"2026-05-30T14:45:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T14:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/747992\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T14:45:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T14:45:14","slug":"kyrie-irving-nearing-full-recovery-from-acl-tear-mavericks-star-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/747992\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyrie Irving nearing full recovery from ACL tear, Mavericks star says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyrie Irving<\/a> continues to recover from a torn ACL in his left knee, but the Mavericks<\/a> star offered an update on that process late Friday evening.<\/p>\n

Irving, speaking on a Twitch stream<\/a>, said he’s making progress and he’s almost fully healthy after being sidelined for the last 15 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am definitely close to being over at 100% in terms of my ACL recovery,” Irving said. “It\u2019s been a while now. I\u2019m so grateful that I\u2019ve had the time to heal and just experiment with my body more on the court and off the court in the weight room and just pushing myself to the limit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irving sustained the injury on March 3, 2025 in a loss to the Sacramento Kings when he inadvertently stepped on\u00a0the foot of Jonas Valanciunas.\u00a0His knee bent awkwardly and he collapsed to the court. Despite the pain, Irving valiantly made both of his free throws before he was escorted to the locker room by his teammates.<\/p>\n

Because Irving suffered the injury in early March of last year, there was initial speculation that he could make a midseason return to help the Mavericks’ playoff hopes. However, Dallas traded Anthony Davis and changed its priorities to build around Cooper Flagg<\/a>, which gave Irving an opportunity to use the entire 2025-26 season to prioritize his rehabilitation process.<\/p>\n

Irving is two months removed from his 34th birthday and will be a year and seven months from his last NBA game by the time the 2026-27 season begins. The initial concern surrounding Irving’s injury was the perception of his age and whether he’d still be able to play at the All-Star caliber level he was just before tearing his ACL.<\/p>\n

“At this age, I feel like the game is slowing down, but I also feel like I’m able to do more out there more efficiently,” Irving said. “I’ve given the proper time for other parts of my body to heal.”<\/p>\n

If\u00a0Irving plays for the Mavericks next season, he\u2019ll do so under a new team president, general manager and head coach, not to mention new assistant coaches and medical personnel. The Mavericks’ new leadership duo of\u00a0Masai Ujiri and Mike\u00a0Schmitz are optimistic about Irving’s fit next to Flagg<\/a>, who earned Rookie of the Year honors this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuper excited, and at least from my perspective, he\u2019s looking forward to the dynamic with him and Cooper on the floor together,\u201d Schmitz told The Dallas Morning News. \u201cThat\u2019s something we\u2019re really, really excited to see. Just his shotmaking, his ability to create offense, his savvy, his IQ, his experience. He\u2019s won at the highest levels of this sport.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyrie Irving continues to recover from a torn ACL in his left knee, but the Mavericks star offered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,6560,686,149,4057,166,6,90942,87093],"class_list":["post-747992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas-mavericks","tag-basketball","tag-brief","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-dallasmavericks","tag-mavericks","tag-nba","tag-tp-kyrie-irving","tag-tp-cooper-flagg"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116664069429786620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}