Whichever way the regular season concludes for the Dallas Mavericks, it's undeniable that the team is not getting the desired results it had in mind when they made the bold move of trading for Kyrie Irving to pair him up with Luka Doncic. Has all the losing towards the end of the regular season become an alienating factor for the Slovenian superstar?

For Mavs owner Mark Cuban, he still believes that Luka Doncic legitimately loves playing in Dallas, but he's also not going to take that for granted.

Via Tim McMahon of ESPN: “Mark Cuban says he believes Luka Doncic wants to spend his entire career in Dallas, ‘but we have to earn that.'”

Luka Doncic has been pretty open about his frustration with how things have turned out so far for the Mavericks, even saying recently after a loss to the cellar-dwelling Charlotte Hornets that it's gotten “really frustrating” for him. “I think you can see it with me on the court. Sometimes I don’t feel it’s me. I’m just being out there. I used to have fun, smiling on the court, but it’s just been frustrating,” Doncic added.

The Mavs looked as though they were among the locks to make the top six in the Western Conference, but a bad 2023 thus far has Luka Doncic and the team on the verge of missing out on even a seat in the Play-in tournament.

In any case, Luka Doncic is under contract with the Mavs until at least the end of the 2025-26 season.