I don’t think anyone saw this happening because everyone was just expecting to see Brooklyn Kyrie in Dallas, talking crazy and sinking his team while being a diva.

I’m pretty sure one poster said Kyrie was an outstanding buy-low candidate whose basketball value was being overlooked because of personal biases.

Tatum/Brown vs. Doncic/Irving will be interesting given Boston has Holiday and White doing some of the defending.

There’s also bound to be some underlying tension between KP and Dallas, especially with Doncic. KP is going to be super pumped. We’ll see if that translates into high level play or nerves given he’s never been under pressure like this and can be a bit shaky at times.

It just feels like Edwards specially isn’t quite ready yet for this level of pressure, while Luka and Kyrie thrive on this sort of environment.

I don’t think anyone saw this happening because everyone was just expecting to see Brooklyn Kyrie in Dallas, talking crazy and sinking his team while being a diva. The fact that he locked in, kept quiet all season long and genuinely seems to love Doncic brought back the really fucking great player we all saw in Cleveland.

The Wolves aren’t dead, they won a bunch of times in Denver so they can do it in Dallas too, but it’s hard to believe they’ll do it again in back to back series.

Here’s a challenge – find one post on this site where someone said the Luka/Kyrie pairing would work out swimmingly

I don’t think the issue was ever about their offense. it was mostly about their defense. The Mavs had a poor defensive supporting cast. So it was hard to imagine it working on defense with Luka and Irving. It didn’t last year. But the addition of Lively (via draft) and Gafford (via trade) at C (a huge defensive weakness) and the other moves they made at the deadline made them a much better defensive team. They were among the best defensive teams after the trade deadline. Also, imo Luka has improved quite a bit on defense this year and is playing much smarter team offense also. IMO he’s a much better all around player now than in previous years even if the boxscore looks similar.