As reported by Shams Charania – an NBA insider for The Athletic – Kyrie Irving has supposedly reached out to LeBron James in an attempt to recruit him to come play for the Dallas Mavericks next season. Since Irving will be a free agent this upcoming offseason, many have speculated that the Lakers could potentially look to sign him and reunite the two stars who delivered a championship to the Cleveland Cavaliers back in 2016. With that being said, this news comes as quite a shock to the NBA world as I don’t think many believed LeBron would consider playing for any other team but the Lakers (so long as he doesn’t retire).
Forget the LeBron-Kyrie reunion, the real story here is LeBron potentially teaming up with perennial All-Star Luka Dončić. Don’t get me wrong, I think Kyrie Irving is an all-time talent, but he hasn’t been relevant on a winning squad in quite some time. After being traded to the Mavericks midway through this past season, Dallas completely nosedived and didn’t even make the Play-In Tournament. I’m certain that Dallas will make some moves this offseason in free agency to hopefully improve their overall roster depth, but who thought LeBron James would possibly be on the table? Obviously, there isn’t a lot of sustenance to this story yet, so who knows if the Mavericks’ front office would even be willing to trade for LeBron despite Kyrie’s requests.
While LeBron is still a top player in the league today, his age did begin to show in these playoffs and the Lakers’ asking price in order to trade him might end up being way too high. At the same time, the Mavericks desperately need to surround Luka with players who can help him compete for a championship, otherwise, he might just up and leave. I’m sure this story will continue to develop throughout the rest of this week, but don’t expect anything major to happen.
