SALT LAKE CITY – Kyrie Irving said not to make a big deal out of the fact that the Dallas Mavericks are 0-2 in games he’s played with Luka Doncic so far.
“It’s a fresh trade, so it’s going to be a figuring out process,” Irving said after Saturday’s practice in preparation for Sunday’s NBA All-Star game. “I wouldn’t call it trouble. We’ve dealt with some ups and downs through live games, and that’s the only way we can really grow.
“I wish we could have training camp together where you guys don’t see some of our mistakes, but we’re living it out in front of you guys. For me, I just have to prepare to be an incredible teammate, of course, but also be selfless enough to change my approach game-to-game. You’ve got to be flexible and adaptable.”
The Mavs (31-29) will try to increase their lot in the Western Conference when they start a pivotal six-game home stand Thursday against the San Antonio Spurs.
Meanwhile, Irving said he wishes there was a way the All-Star game could be competitive. Then he was asked if he thinks an All-Star game pitting the international players against the American-born players would make for a competitive contest.
“Man, I would love to see that – the American-born players against the international players,” said Irving, who was born in Melbourne, Australia. “I’ll finally get to be on the side that I’m supposed to be on – the international players’ side.”
The international squad would include the likes of Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Andrew Wiggins, Doncic and Irving, just to name a few.
“I’m an Aussie-born man over here, so I take pride in where I come from,” Irving said. “But I think any way to get the guys going in this All-Star game to put up a target score or have some type of material incentive rather than monetary — where we can have bragging rights for that night — it just made the competition a lot more fun a few years ago.
“Right now it’s kind of, I don’t know, sometimes it can be boring as a player because no one is competing. Me personally, I want to play hard.”
The Mavs acquired Irving in a trade with the Brooklyn Nets on Feb. 6. Irving was asked if it’s bad for the NBA when players request a trade, and he offered his analysis of the situation.
“What’s a bad situation, and why doesn’t anybody have the ability to ask for trades?” Irving asked. “That’s my question. When did it become terrible to make great business decisions for yourself and your happiness and your piece of mind? Not every employer you’re going to get along with, so if you have a chance to go somewhere else and you’re doing it legally, I don’t think there’s a problem with it.
“Again, there’s speculations and narratives that make this entertainment seem a little bit more important than it actually is, but it’s my life. It’s not just a dream that everybody can gossip about. I take it very serious, and most of the work that I do doesn’t get seen, and I don’t know if it ever will be truly appreciated. But all-in-all the work is hard, and as I do or anyone else at a specific profession, I feel that you should have the liberty and the freedom to go where you’re wanted and where you’re celebrated and where you feel comfortable. I wouldn’t say any of my situations were bad. I just think they were lessons and growing within the business of the NBA and learning that every organization is different.”
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT UPDATE: The NBA and the Players Association would like to get a deal done on a new collective bargaining agreement by the end of next month.
“I think at least what we have discussed across the table from the Players Association is that we wouldn’t publicly list the issues that are potentially keeping us apart,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said. “I would just say as a general matter, I think for us our greatest focus is having the greatest competition possible out there. I think we’ve made great headway over the years as we’ve improved the system to have more competition, as we’re seeing clearly from this season.
“I think you need more data to know whether the season is an aberration or whether it’s a result, in part, of the system we now have in place. The league’s view is that there are changes that we can make that will make the league even that much more competitive.”
NBA NOT CLOSE TO AN EXPANSION: While Las Vegas and Seattle have been cities mentioned as possible destinations if the NBA ever has an expansion, nothing is etched in stone.
“There haven’t been any discussions on expansion recently,” Silver said. “What I’ve said before — because the topic comes up a lot — I would say mainly people asking me or others in the league about it is that it is natural at some point that an organization expands. In this case because we’re both in a CBA cycle and a national media cycle, our current deals are up in two-and-a-half years.
“The view from our governors has been let’s figure out exactly what the new CBA looks like, let’s figure out what our new media deals look like. Then let’s think about expansion. So invariably we will. There’s no active discussions in the league office right now, but we’ll turn back to it in a few years.”
BRIEFLY: Mac McClung, who played at Texas Tech in 2020-21, won the slam dunk contest in dramatic fashion with a series of perfect 50 scores that whipped the crowd into a tizzy. On his last dunk, McClung earned a perfect score from all five judges when he did a double-clutch reverse dunk, much to the delight of the crowd. McClung is a two-way player for the Philadelphia 76ers. . .Portland’s Damian Lillard won the three-point contest when he scored on the two-point money ball at the buzzer to edge Buddy Hield, 26-25.
Twitter: @DwainPrice
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