{"id":126794,"date":"2025-03-04T05:54:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T10:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=126794"},"modified":"2025-03-04T05:54:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T10:54:59","slug":"kyrie-irving-injury-are-mavericks-cursed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/04\/kyrie-irving-injury-are-mavericks-cursed\/","title":{"rendered":"Irving Injured, Are The Dallas Mavericks Officially Cursed?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Mavericks\u2019 injury report isn\u2019t getting any prettier. The team has been dealing with injuries all season long, and things just got a whole lot worse. <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/i\/irvinky01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kyrie Irving<\/a>, the team\u2019s last remaining healthy star, left the Kings game on Monday night with a left knee sprain. Kyrie Irving&#8217;s injury doesn\u2019t look good at all. Irving was basically unable to walk, and the injury was non-contact. This is just the cherry on top for what has been a <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/27\/anthony-davis-dishes-on-trade\/\" target=\"_self\">terrible 2025<\/a> for Mavericks fans. It seems like the Mavericks may be cursed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Irving Injured, Are The Dallas Mavericks Officially Cursed?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><strong>The Mavericks Have Angered The Basketball Gods<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s not even rehash how bad the <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/doncilu01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Luka Doncic<\/a> trade was for the Mavericks. That really is the event that everyone can look at as the deciding point for a new Mavericks era. The trade will probably go down as one of the worst in NBA history, and the basketball gods may be punishing the Mavericks for letting a generational talent go.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Dallas Mavericks Injury Report<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Dallas\u2019 injury report is the the biggest place the Mavericks bad luck has hit. They currently are without <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/l\/livelde01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dereck Lively II<\/a> and <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/g\/gaffoda01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Daniel Gafford<\/a>, their two centers. Both of them have missed significant time to injury this season. Okay, but didn\u2019t they just trade for <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/davisan02.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Anthony Davis<\/a>? They did, but Davis went down in his first game as a Mavericks player. That timing is pretty curse-like. Now add an Irving knee injury to the list of injured Mavericks players.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A moment of pure determination for Kyrie Irving. <\/p>\n<p>After suffering an injury, Kyrie was helped to the line to take his free throws before exiting the game. <\/p>\n<p>He made both. \ud83d\udc4f\ud83d\udc4f <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hJDDRTDLg7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/hJDDRTDLg7<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NBA (@NBA) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NBA\/status\/1896759342315213170?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 4, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Davis was supposed to help the Mavericks vault back into contention (weren\u2019t they already there with Doncic?). He\u2019s now been sidelined for weeks and has still not resumed play. The Mavericks were leaning on their other star, Irving, to keep the team afloat with Davis out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Kyrie Irving Injury Looks Bad<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So why is Irving getting injured just so devastating for Dallas? The Mavericks were hoping to compete for a championship in the wake of giving up on Doncic. Their <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/02\/dallas-mavericks-gm-nico-harrison-trading-luka\/\" target=\"_self\">laughable ownership group and front office<\/a> thought that Irving and Davis, two players with a long injury history, could give them a better shot at an NBA championship than Doncic did. Cue Irving\u2019s knee injury.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This injury to Irving could not come at a worse moment. Davis is on his way back, and Irving has been the biggest reason the Mavericks haven\u2019t completely fallen out of the playoff picture. The team is 5-5 in their last ten games. They are currently hanging onto the 10th seed in the Western Conference. The team has very little room for error.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Irving&#8217;s knee injury also looks like a bad one. On a drive to the lane, his knee buckled and hyperextended, sending him to the floor. Any non-contact injury isn\u2019t a great sign, and the way Irving and his teammates were acting has some people assuming the worst. Irving was able to limp his way to the free throw line and knock down two free throws, but he looked to be in intense pain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Irving has already sustained two major knee injuries in his career and countless others to his lower body. The Mavericks are going to need a miracle prognosis because the injury certainly looked severe enough to keep Irving out for an extended period of time. The Mavericks could be in big trouble. These are the types of things that happen when your franchise is cursed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Photo credit: \u00a9 Jerome Miron-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mavericks\u2019 injury report isn\u2019t getting any prettier. The team has been dealing with injuries all season long, and things just got a whole lot worse. Kyrie Irving, the team\u2019s last remaining healthy star, left the Kings game on Monday night with a left knee sprain. Kyrie Irving&#8217;s injury doesn\u2019t look good at all. Irving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5284,"featured_media":126825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,30,62,3],"tags":[240,1453,49797,406,1133],"class_list":["post-126794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-mavericks","category-nba","category-news","tag-anthony-davis","tag-daniel-gafford","tag-dereck-lively","tag-kyrie-irving","tag-luka-doncic"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126794"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126827,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126794\/revisions\/126827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}