{"id":586898,"date":"2026-05-30T04:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T04:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/586898\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T04:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T04:39:14","slug":"mike-schmitz-optimistic-about-kyrie-irvings-future-with-mavs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/586898\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Schmitz optimistic about Kyrie Irving’s future with Mavs"},"content":{"rendered":"

If\u00a0Kyrie Irving<\/a> plays for the Mavericks<\/a> 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His future has been a hot topic since this month\u2019s hiring of Masai Ujiri<\/a> and Mike\u00a0Schmitz<\/a>, who\u00a0have been glowingly optimistic about the possibility of pairing a healthy Irving on the court with Cooper\u00a0Flagg<\/a>, a reality that didn\u2019t come to fruition this season because the nine-time All-Star focused on rehabilitating his torn left ACL.<\/p>\n

In an interview with The Dallas Morning News\u00a0on Friday, Schmitz\u00a0was asked about Irving\u2019s perception of the franchise following the wave of changes in leadership. The new general manager didn\u2019t want to speak for Irving, but he expressed more enthusiasm about the guard\u2019s involvement with the team going forward.<\/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 said. \u201cThat\u2019s something we\u2019re really, really excited to see. Just his\u00a0shotmaking, his ability to create offense, his savvy, his IQ, his experience. He\u2019s won at the highest levels of this sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irving is under contract for at least one more season and has the ability to become an unrestricted free agent next summer if he opts out of his player option for 2027-28. He just\u00a0turned 34 in March and will be roughly a year and seven months removed from his last NBA game by the time the 2025-26 regular season starts.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing around him so far out here, the competitive level and the attention to detail and the leadership is really, really impressive,\u201d Schmitz said. \u201cSo again, I don\u2019t want to speak for him, but our conversations we\u2019ve had have been great. You can feel the energy and the enthusiasm and the authenticity in who he is, and I\u2019m really, really thankful to come into this building every day with a guy like that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If\u00a0Kyrie Irving plays for the Mavericks next season, he\u2019ll do so under a new team president, general manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5117],"tags":[196,147,5278,5,4,197,64591,65367],"class_list":["post-586898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas-stars","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-stars","tag-dallasstars","tag-hockey","tag-nhl","tag-stars","tag-tp-dallas-mavericks","tag-tp-irving"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116661686323641063","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}