Ringer illustration Reneged promises. Sabotaged superteams. Trade requests. A suspension. And now ... quiet. How did the NBA's most turbulent personality become the stabilizing force of the Dallas Mavericks? "The more that you get out of your own way and you become more selfless, the more opportunities come to you," Irving says. When the Dallas Mavericks pulled off a monumental—and somewhat controversial—trade for Kyrie Irving in February 2023, they knew it wouldn't save their season. "There's not a place in history that shows that that actually works in the middle of the season," Mavs general manager Nico Harrison told The Ringer earlier this year. And it didn't; Dallas went 10-18 the rest of the way as Irving and Luka Doncic worked through the early, stilted days of their partnership and the Mavs, who had an inside track on the playoffs, slipped out of the postseason mix entirely. "The biggest thing was that we got a little sample size of Kyrie and Luka," Harrison said. "And we knew at that time that we didn't have the right players surrounding those guys." So the front office went to work identifying what this new version of the team needed most, and Irving went to work...