Kyrie Irving and the Dallas Mavericks are currently getting ready to take part in the upcoming NBA Finals vs the Boston Celtics, which are set to get underway with Game 1 on Thursday evening from the TD Garden. The Mavericks have gotten to this point by defeating three separate 50-plus win teams in their side of the Western Conference postseason bracket, and Irving turned his scoring up quite a bit in the Western Conference Finals to help overcome the Minnesota Timberwolves, who had the best defense in the NBA this year.
This year, the stories revolving around Irving have focused more on his basketball prowess and less on some of the bizarre rumors swirling about his life off of the court, which has been refreshing, since Irving is one of the most entertaining players to watch in the history of the sport.
In fact, recently, sports media personality Skip Bayless of FS1 heaped some lofty praise in Irving's direction on a recent episode of Undisputed.
“Inch for inch, Kyrie is the most gifted player I've ever seen,” said Bayless, via UNDISPUTED on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter. “If we just go up to six feet, two inches tall, because he's more gifted that (Allen Iverson) was, and I loved AI. And AI could leap out of the gym in ways Kyrie can't, but Kyrie has a handle that even AI did not have to me. And it's close, but listen, Kyrie's handle is a spectacular, off the charts, never seen before handle… this is magical handles… and then we get to shot making, shot creation. I've never seen anything like Kyrie. Again, at 6'2″, just creating the shot, figuring it out on the fly, where if that doesn't work, I'll go over here and I'll make this work.”
Indeed, Irving is one of the most mesmerizing players to watch with the basketball in his hands, as he often improvises moves on a dime that most players would have to take years of practice to master.
Can the Mavericks pull the upset?
The Celtics are expected by most pundits to defeat the Mavericks in these NBA Finals largely because they project to have five out of the best seven players on the floor going into the series and essentially start a diet All-Star team. There is also the fact that Irving's most recent postseason showing against the Celtics back in 2022 as a member of the Brooklyn Nets was one of the worst of his career.
However, the Irving we've seen this year and Dallas almost seems to be a completely different person than we've seen during his previous stops with other organizations, albeit with the same mind-numbing skill and scoring ability. With a championship this year, Irving would go down as one of the, if not the greatest number two option in NBA history due to having done it with two different co-stars (Luka Doncic and LeBron James).
In any case, Game 1 is set for Thursday evening at 8:30 PM ET.
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