The NBA community was collectively left dumbfounded Monday when multiple league insiders reported Kyrie Irving reached out to LeBron James to recruit him to the Dallas Mavericks. This comes weeks after James hinted at retirement, seemingly as a leverage play to incentivize the Los Angeles Lakers front office to bring in more championship-ready players.
Everyone speculated that Irving would top LA’s shopping list.
However, acquiring the polarizing point guard would require Rob Pelinka to move mountains. Perhaps Irving is aware of that and went out of his way — maybe without even consoling Luka Doncic or Mark Cuban — to see if James would be open to being traded to Dallas.