Mavericks Superstar Questions His Love Of The Game...

Mavericks Superstar Questions His Love Of The Game…

The Dallas Mavericks are entering the 2026-2027 season with a goal in mind: making the playoffs. And that’s not a far-fetched ambition, either. They have a budding superstar in Cooper Flagg. Kyrie Irving looks exceptional after sitting out the previous season due to an injury. Plus, this team still has its main supporting cast from when they made the NBA Finals a couple of years ago.

When it comes to their franchise future, they are heading in the right direction. It seems like they have slowly moved on after trading former franchise star Luka Doncic to the Lakers in 2025. The Mavs have all the right pieces to compete for a playoff berth in the brutal West.

However, one particular Maverick is having second thoughts about the NBA’s future. And he has implied that it has affected his love for basketball.

Kyrie Irving Calls Today’s Basketball ‘Robotic’

The NBA has changed a lot in recent years. Social media has become the driving force of unnecessary outside drama that has mostly stayed within the locker rooms of each franchise in the past. 

Kyrie Irving knows that too well. He’s been involved in many controversies before landing in a Mavericks uniform. In a recent interview, the 34-year-old expressed his honest thoughts about changes in the NBA that have him questioning his future.

‘You have social media and gambling which is running rampant and it’s not the same NBA that I fell in love with as a kid and I’m very much aware of that. And I don’t say that as a negative thing, it’s just when I came in, we were not doing like tipping and gambling meetings. You know, kind of talking about these things that are going on on social media and mental health was like this foreign subject …like nobody ever talked about it in 2011, so I think that the game has changed, it’s become less human, it’s more robotic. And I think my next few years, I kind of look at it as like, do I really love that aspect of it? I love the playing, I love the competition, but do I love all the hoopla that goes into it,’ Irving said.