The Dallas Mavericks completed their purge of the central figures involved in the Luka Dončić trade Tuesday when they parted ways with head coach Jason Kidd. General manager Nico Harrison was fired in November, and Anthony Davis, the key acquisition in the deal, was shipped to Washington in February. With Cooper Flagg in place and Masai Ujiri brought in to run the team, the Mavericks are set up for an all-out reboot.
So where does that leave the rest of the roster Harrison built? That’s a case-by-case question. Younger players like Dereck Lively, Max Christie and P.J. Washington probably have futures in Dallas. Older ones, like Kyrie Irving, are question marks.
Ujiri has expressed optimism in the Flagg-Irving pairing, including while speaking to reporters on Wednesday after Kidd’s ousting.
“Kevin Durant once told me that there’s only one Kyrie walking around in the world,” Ujiri reported. “I think we have to figure out a way how Kyrie fits with our program. I’ve had those conversations with Kyrie, up ’till yesterday, and I think Kyrie will fit. I’ve reported it before: there’s a huge curiosity in our minds to see how Kyrie fits playing with Cooper Flagg. He’s just that kind of incredible talent and player, and I think we owe this organization that.”
That reported, the new team president wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t hype the duo. Irving is 34 and coming off a torn ACL that caused him to miss the entire 2025-26 season. His time to win is now. Flagg is a teenager just scratching the surface of what he can be in this league. His time to win is later. There’s some intrinsic value in trying to be competitive now and getting Flagg high-leverage reps, especially with Dallas no longer able to benefit from tanking thanks to lottery reform and its lack of draft capital, but that lack of capital is precisely why an Irving trade makes sense.
The Mavericks are operating at a massive asset disadvantage against the best teams in the Western Conference. They won’t control their own first-round pick again until 2031. Cashing out on Irving now is one of the only paths this team has to securing the draft capital it will need to build for Flagg’s future. It would be irresponsible not to at least explore the market. And they’re expected to receive trade interest in Irving this offseason, according to Marc Stein.
So who makes sense? There are three pretty clear standouts here, followed by a few teams whose fits would be circumstantial.
1. Minnesota Timberwolves
What is an all-in team to do when it needs to go further in? The Timberwolves have invested basically all of their available draft capital into building their current roster. It led to the most successful era in franchise history, but a pretty hard playoff ceiling. They were not competitive with the Thunder last spring. They were not competitive with the Spurs in the last round. Those teams aren’t going anywhere. If the goal is to beat them, the Timberwolves are not close.
They lack the assets to pursue a younger, healthier star without compromising the rest of the roster. They tried for Giannis Antetokounmpo in February, but is pairing him with Anthony Edwards worth everything else Minnesota has? They could take a step back, turning older players like Rudy Gobert, Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo into younger pieces and draft picks, but doing so with Edwards in his prime is playing with fire. How content would he be to retool? Keeping him happy means trying to win. Trying to win with the tools at their disposal means taking a risk.
Minnesota could match money with Randle and DiVincenzo. It doesn’t have much draft capital remaining, but the front office can offer No. 28 this year, first-round swap rights in 2028 (valuable since Dallas currently owes a swap to Oklahoma City, so almost any secondary swap would be helpful), and an unprotected pick in 2033, when Irving will likely be retired. If Dallas likes the long-term prospects of Joan Beringer or Terrence Shannon, that greases the wheels here.
The Timberwolves needed a No. 2 option offensively against San Antonio to prevent the doubles and pressure the Spurs threw at Edwards. Randle wasn’t up to the task. If Irving is himself next season, Minnesota could have one of the most lethal offensive pairings in the NBA, coupled with the defensive infrastructure provided by Jaden McDaniels and Rudy Gobert. It’s not exactly a haul for Dallas, but the Mavericks shouldn’t expect one for a player as risky as Irving. Tim Connelly is as willing to take risks as any general manager in the NBA. There’s a clean fit here.
2. Houston Rockets
Kevin Durant isn’t known for being especially sentimental, including when he shot down a potential return to the Golden State Warriors in 2025. But he did reunite with James Harden in Brooklyn after almost a decade apart. Houston could certainly use guard help, so perhaps the Rockets would consider pairing Irving and Durant yet again.
The Rockets are loaded with draft capital, including, potentially, a Mavericks pick in 2029. They can match money with Fred VanVleet, who’d be a useful veteran point guard for Dallas, assuming he picks up his player option, and Dorian Finney-Smith, a former fan-favorite for the Mavericks. Little needs to be reported about the basketball fit. The Rockets had the second-worst per-play half-court offense in the playoffs and ranked 19th on that front in the regular season. Durant and Irving could cover the half-court offense. Their legion of young wings could generate transition offense and rebounding and play defense. It’s the obvious sort of move Houston could make to build on last year’s flaws.
But the Rockets spent a year avoiding such a move. They may have traded for a 37-year-old Durant, but they’re not functioning as an all-in team. The core of this roster is still young, and bringing in Irving risks relegating former No. 3 overall pick Reed Sheppard to permanent bench duties. Part of general manager Rafael Stone’s motivation in resisting a major guard acquisition last season was seemingly to prevent head coach Ime Udoka from banishing Sheppard like that.
The Rockets have no great reason to rush, and if they feel that urge, they have the resources to pursue Antetokounmpo without gutting the rest of the team, unlike Minnesota. It’s not a terrible idea if the price is low enough, but as we covered earlier, there’s quite a bit of risk inherent in this sort of acquisition. The Timberwolves don’t have much of a choice but to take that risk. The asset-rich Rockets can afford to be pickier, so even if there’s basketball logic here, it probably doesn’t fit into Houston’s bigger, roster-building plans.
3. Detroit Pistons
The Pistons make slightly more sense than the Rockets among the teams that employ a Thompson twin. Cade Cunningham is nominally a point guard, but he’s big enough to defend any guard and would absolutely benefit from sharing the ball-handling load. The Pistons control all of their own first-round picks, have an elite defense to support Irving and primarily need another player who can hit the sort of low-percentage shots their minimally spaced offense can produce. That’s Irving in a nutshell.
Ujiri has a historic affinity for athletic wings, and former No. 5 overall pick Ron Holland fell out of the rotation in the playoffs. That’s an interesting starting point if the Pistons prefer to keep most of their draft capital. The bigger questions here are financial.
Detroit’s easiest salary-matching contracts — Tobias Harris and Kevin Huerter — have both expired. Duncan Robinson and Isaiah Stewart are both foundational role players, and Caris LeVert is the only other substantial salary who would seemingly be on the table. On top of matching the money, the Pistons would have to move forward with Cunningham and Irving making significant salaries, Jalen Duren presumably getting a hefty new contract this offseason and Ausar Thompson hopefully extending on a deal that would kick in after next season. That’s suddenly a pretty top-heavy salary structure if Irving is staying beyond his existing contract.
The Pistons have shown little inclination to rush this roster build. If they’d wanted to make a win-now push, they could have done so at the deadline. While Irving may be a viable player type, the patient manner in which the Pistons have operated under Trajan Langdon suggests they’re more likely to wait for someone younger who fits it before making a serious push.
4. Milwaukee Bucks
The widespread presumption is that Milwaukee will ultimately trade Giannis Antetokounmpo, but they could technically go the other way. They have three first-round picks to trade, including No. 10 overall this year. Maybe an aggressive push for Irving compels Antetokounmpo to extend.
The basic strategy here would likely be to trade the 2031 and/or 2033 first-round picks, but hold onto No. 10, which they could then use on a cheap rookie. Ideally, that rookie would be someone a bit older and ready to win now, like Michigan’s Yaxel Lendeborg. The matching money here would likely be Kyle Kuzma, now on an expiring contract, and Bobby Portis, on a reasonably priced deal in the mid-level range.
The Bucks would be far from flawless at that point. Perimeter defense would still be an issue, as would front-court depth. Irving and Antetokounmpo are both enormous injury risks. Myles Turner had an enormously disappointing first season in Milwaukee. But the basic formula here would be pretty interesting. Antetokounmpo, another star scorer, a lot of shooting and strong rim-protection? That’s at least a starting point for a competitive team if everything goes right.
Of course, this all hinges on Antetokounmpo’s willingness to extend. If his goal is to win another championship, he has far easier paths to doing so than Milwaukee. It’s a matter of his priorities and, given how inconsistent he has been about his future, there’s no way of knowing at this point whether a move like this would excite him or not.
5. Toronto Raptors
The Raptors, by virtue of all of the bad contracts they’ve accumulated, are in a bit of a bind when it comes to upgrading their roster. The benefit of trading with Dallas is that Masai Ujiri acquired almost every player on their roster and signed many of these players to the iffy contracts they’re now playing on.
He might be a bit more open-minded about taking on players like Immanuel Quickley, Brandon Ingram or Jakob Poeltl than other general managers would be, and while the Anthony Davis trade returned little in the way of assets, it completely cleared Dallas’ books of bad money. The Mavericks can afford to take on bad money for the right attached assets. They have three cheap years of Cooper Flagg’s rookie deal left. If Ujiri wants any of his former Raptors acquisitions back, this is a path to getting them.
Toronto found something in the playoffs with Scottie Barnes serving as the primary ball-handler, but he badly needs a star-level shotmaker by his side to make up for his limitations on that front. Ingram was supposed to be that player. Instead, he was helpless in the first round before going down with an injury. Irving would theoretically be affordable enough to pursue as a short-term upgrade while Toronto considers its long-term plan around Barnes. If they could get someone younger, that would be preferable, but given the contracts they’re working with, well, that’s probably going to be difficult.
