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Why are the Mavericks fans upset about Kyrie Irving?
Welcome to the Bill Simmons podcast. Before we get to the pod, I want to talk about Kyrie Irving and the Dallas Mavericks and this crazy situation. Kyrie out for the year, tore his ACL, came out today. And Kyrie is, I've had a rollercoaster ride with over the years where didn't really like him on Cleveland. LeBron showed up, really liked him, didn't like him as much, came to my favorite team, was all in. It couldn't have ended worse. Became probably my least favorite basketball player. Goes to Brooklyn. That goes terrible. Goes to Dallas. You guys are so stupid. And then over the last two years, or last maybe year and a half, I really grew to like him as a basketball player. I liked how he talked about everything, how he took some responsibility. It was like everything I wanted from an athlete. I really liked watching him and I grew to respect and like him as a player. And they make this Luka trade. It is the least popular, most shocking, most indefensible trade in the history of the league. It's getting worse by the day. The fans are just so angry.
They are like scorn lovers multiplied by 100. They raised the season ticket prices this week. Everybody goes nuts again. This is the angriest fan base that we've had in a while. And here's Kyrie, who's, by the way, they're putting crazy minutes on him. He's in the 2010 draft. or 2011 draft. He's been in the league for a while. He's a point guard. He's playing the last six weeks, 38.7 minutes, which led the league. So they're throwing this huge burden on a guy who hasn't exactly been Cal Ripken Jr., And they're talking about how they rebuilt themselves. This was about a title window. They trade for Davis. He gets hurt in the first game. They put this crazy load on Kyrie. He breaks down. It's after the trade deadline.
They have their first round pick next year. And what we've seen with this injury over the years is it's almost a two-year injury. You lose the guy this year. But even when he comes back, we saw this happen with Jamal Murray in Denver. Either they don't come back the season after or when they come back, they're not the same person. So you almost have to think you lose a year and a half. They don't have control of their own pick from 27 to 30. And on top of this, They have to watch Luka, who's already rejuvenated. You can see it. When we talk about face of the league, face of the league, like Luka on the most famous basketball franchise we have, all due respect to the Celtics. You can watch the Celtics City documentary. But the Lakers, I think, are the...
the premier franchise in the league. The Celtics are the most successful. The Lakers are in LA. They've had the most stars. Luka's in there now. There's an energy that's completely different at these games. And the Maverick fans who already got kicked in the nuts with this trade in the worst way I think we've ever seen in basketball. Now they have to watch this guy blossom as their team already just fell apart. And You know, I tweeted this earlier today and I really mean it. I went to those three 2011 finals games in Dallas when they came back and they beat Miami. They actually lost the first game, which was Dwayne Wade, I think the best game I've ever seen him play. And then they come back, they win game four, they win game five. And a big reason they won those games was their crowd was incredible. I don't know where they rank in the best basketball fan bases, but for me, they're in the top seven. And, you know, I used to love the Warriors fan base even before the Curry stuff happened. There's the Knicks, no matter how bad the teams are.
If you went to a game and they liked the team, it was just a great place to see a game. You can feel the love. And I really feel like the Dallas fans, everything they had built from 1980 on, like had gotten to that level. They really loved this team. They appreciated Dirk. Um, they really wanted him to come through. And then in those, those three games, especially the last two, and they started to shift the narrative on Dirk and you could just really feel the love and, and the pure euphoria. Um, and then Luca shows up, becomes their guy and they're like, we're in, we have 20 air season tickets for this dude. We'll buy his jerseys. We love this guy. This is our guy. We'll have some ups and downs.
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