North Texas college towns talk basketball in September even when the NBA calendar still has weeks of runway.
The Mavericks' regular-season clock starts Wednesday, Oct. 21, at Houston - 7:30 p.m. CT at Toyota Center - per the club's 2026-27 schedule announcement. A home opener against the San Antonio Spurs follows on Oct. 24 at American Airlines Center. Those dates are settled. Kyrie Irving's role beside Cooper Flagg is not.
ESPN's Tim MacMahon, in a Sept. 22 injury-returns package, reported that Dallas shelved Irving's comeback during last season's All-Star break with the club headed toward the lottery, and that Irving will be about 19 months removed from tearing the ACL in his knee when training camp begins.
MacMahon also wrote that Irving has been ramping in summer pickup games, and that teams around the league are watching whether the 34-year-old fits long-term plans built around a teenage core.
What the numbers say Irving still supplies
NBA.com's John Schuhmann, in the league's Mavericks preview, noted Dallas scored 1.11 points per chance on Irving isolations over the last three seasons - seventh among 110 players with at least 300 such possessions - and 1.04 per chance on his pick-and-rolls, still ahead of the handlers who replaced him.
Last season, without that creation, Schuhmann wrote, Dallas ranked 27th offensively overall and 30th in half-court efficiency despite ranking second in transition.
That split is why Denton fans who stayed up for lottery basketball last winter keep circling Irving's name. Transition points are a sugar high. Half-court possessions decide March.
A roster built to feed Flagg - if the guard play holds
ESPN's offseason recap described Masai Ujiri's first moves as Flagg-first: Morez Johnson Jr.'s motor, Sergio de Larrea's vision, Zaccharie Risacher's spacing. USA Today reported Dusty May arriving from Michigan's national title run as a first-time NBA head coach, with Irving and Dereck Lively II both expected back from long absences.
May inherits a frontcourt logjam Powell catalogued on NBA.com - Washington, Lively, Gafford, Aldama, Johnson - and a backcourt that, per ESPN, thinned out enough to make Irving's availability existential for any short-term climb.
