tore the ACL<\/a> in his left knee on March 3, 2025.<\/p>\n\u201cIt was just impressive,\u201d Dallas coach Dusty May told reporters in a postgame news conference. \u201cHis physical condition, his mental condition, and then \u2014 I\u2019ve said it from the first time I watched him in a workout \u2014 he\u2019s an artist. He\u2019s a jazz musician. \u2026 I didn\u2019t expect him to play this well after being off so long.\u201d<\/p>\n
Irving shot 6-for-13 in just under 22 minutes, plus he had three assists and two rebounds. Dallas won the opening tap, and reigning Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg set up Irving on the right wing. Irving didn\u2019t hesitate, driving toward the baseline and then scoring with the reverse.<\/p>\n
Kyrie Irving scored 17 points in his return for the Dallas Mavericks, leading them to a win over the Houston Rockets in Macao.<\/p>\n
The Mavericks\u2019 bench immediately started celebrating, and the roar of the crowd in China \u2014 where the Rockets are one of the most popular teams, mainly because of Chinese superstar, Rockets great and Basketball Hall of Famer Yao Ming \u2014 was noticeable as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrateful that Dusty called the first play for me,\u201d Irving said. \u201cHad my mind made up, just to attack. \u2026 I was imagining how it was going to go, dreaming about how it was going to go and just glad that I got that out the way. Just incredibly grateful for my teammates as well and their support and just seeing them rise up off the bench to celebrate me as well, that always feels good. And God is truly the greatest. So just being able to perform at a high level, that felt amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Irving missed all of last season, so it had been just over 20 months since he last played in a game.<\/p>\n
The nine-time All-Star was averaging 24.7 points for Dallas when he got hurt late in the 2024-25 season, and anything close to that this season would surely be a welcome boost to a franchise that went to the NBA Finals in 2024 but missed each of the last two postseasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always great to see somebody coming from the injury that Ky came from to get back on the court,\u201d Houston guard Marcus Smart said. \u201cI know we compete, but you want to compete against the best and you want everybody to be out there. For him to be back out there, it was great to see. He looked good, but we expected him to look good. Very happy for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Irving played eight minutes in the first quarter, a little more than eight in the second quarter and returned for the first 5 1\/2 minutes of the third quarter before getting the rest of the game off.<\/p>\n
Irving is enormously popular in China, a place he has visited many times over the years and plans to again in 2027 as part of his annual world tour. He thanked fans who showed up outside the Mavs\u2019 hotel to show support or sent good-luck messages on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a lot of emotions that were going into it,\u201d Irving said. \u201cLooking forward to getting back home and continuing to carry on what we learned here from each other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyrie Irving played his first game for the Mavericks since March 2025 on Sunday in China. Kyrie Irving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,289688,105],"class_list":["post-643463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-kyrie-irving-returns-for-mavericks","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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