Appearing on the Showtime With Michael Cooper Lakers Podcast (YouTube link), Mavericks wing Klay Thompson said Kyrie Irving is the “toughest guy” he’s ever guarded and has “no weaknesses in his game,” as Ashish Mathur of DallasHoopsJournal.com relays.
“It’s nice to be his teammate,” Thompson said of Irving. “You know, Kyrie and I had so many battles during those years at Golden State. We saw Cleveland four straight years in the Finals, three of them being with Kai.
“And I’ll never forget, I know you always used to check the best offensive player, and some nights there’s just nothing you could do when you’re guarding a guy like Michael (Jordan) or Larry (Bird) or Isiah (Thomas). Same thing with Kyrie.”
Here’s more on the Mavs:
- Irving, who tore the ACL in his left knee in early March, provided a minor injury update last week, saying he was “healing up great.” Overtime released a short video (Twitter link) on Sunday showing Irving practicing floaters and jump shots at the NBPA practice facility in New York (hat tip to Grant Afseth of Dallas Hoops Journal). Afseth notes that the nine-time All-Star appeared to be “moving comfortably on the court.”
- After waiving and stretching 2023 first-round pick Olivier-Maxence Prosper on Friday, Dallas will now carry a $3.2MM dead-money cap hit each of the next three years, tweets Keith Smith of Spotrac. Only about $1MM of that total came from stretching Prosper’s contract; the other $2.2MM is owed to JaVale McGee, who was cut by the Mavericks a couple years ago.
- In case you missed it, multiple reporters have indicated that P.J. Washington is likely to sign an extension with Dallas, though the exact terms remain unclear.
Man Javale McGee is still on the books???
Poor Klay. Tried to go full mercenary and join the finals team, and now whats he left with?
Four rings, set for life and probably happy after being disrespected by the warriors. Also on a ball club with a brighter future.
Really? You dont think theres annnnyyyy part of him that feels screwed by the way things played out in Dallas? Like I get it that he felt disrespected, I would say the 200M+ super max he got paying him to rehab was doing right by him, but thats neither here nor there.
I think he was a little full of shiet to not understand why the team couldnt just hand him a huge deal with no regard for caps/aprons/his production/team building limitations. Like did he want respect, or did he want to win, because there was no path to a winner with Klay on the like 35M+ per season contract he wanted.
I would say Stephs in the same boat. Dudes a billionaire, if not yet, then soon. If he wants respect he can keep taking up 40% of the teams cap space, or he can take waaaayyy less, since if Stephs at 20M the team has real cap space to sign a FA star to play next to him at the end. It sucks because Steph deserves far more than hes made, but these are the rules for building rosters in the NBA. Does he really care about winning above anything else? Are rings really his only motivation left?
Cooper Flagg is an interesting piece to build around long term, but I would bet a lot of money that DAL is way worse than GSW this season unless Steph misses the whole season. AD is injury prone, and the team has nobody on the roster who can be an initiator besides Dlo. Its a bad roster that they wont get value for some of the pieces on it until they arent worth much in all likelihood.
Too many peeps poo pooing dallas’ chances this year.
Latent anti-nico bias maybe
Whos initiating offense? And thats why people are thinking they are not contenders. Could they be good next year if KI looks like his old self coming back off a major leg injury heading into his mid 30s? Maybe.
Is AD going to be able to play games? Yeah thats what I thought…
I mean based on recent history Nico is the worst exec outside NOP. He shat the bed, and then acted like it was the plan all the time when he hit the 1.7% runner runner out. Luck doesnt obfuscate all the poor decision making. Most recently giving KI a giant pile of money to rehab on a super player friendly contract.
You get paid the max you can for your profession, it’s not a hobby.
GSW would have given him 3/42M after trying to land PG and Lauri. Its not like he got what he thought he deserved. Sometimes these guys cant take market value from the place where they are because of the history. Klay got a fair contract, but wanted a lot more, and wanted it first.
This season…maybe. and beyond, definitely not.
GSW have all the pieces to either make some moves for additional help, or reset when Steph retires and do a rebuild with their own picks.
Is it possible to have too many forwards on your roster ??