Irving trade official as Mavs essentially start season over

Luka Doncic has his co-star, and the Dallas Mavericks are set for their season essentially to start over after trading for Kyrie Irving.

The blockbuster deal with Brooklyn sending the mercurial Irving to the Mavericks became official Monday, two days before what figures to be his Dallas debut at the Los Angeles Clippers.

Dallas also gets Markieff Morris in a trade that sent Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, a 2029 first-round pick and two second-round choices to the Nets.

It’s unknown if Doncic will be available against the Clippers. He wasn’t with the Mavs at the start of a five-game trip out West after bruising his right heel in the final home game before the trip. He was ruled out of the second game on the trip at Utah on Monday night.

Whenever the all-stars do get on the court together, Doncic and Irving instantly become one of the NBA’s top duos in a tightly packed Western Conference.

Doncic is in a dead heat for the scoring lead with fellow MVP candidate Joel Embiid of Philadelphia, and is the only one of the seven current 30-point scorers also averaging at least eight rebounds and eight assists per game. Irving is averaging 27.1 points, 5.3 assists and

5.1 rebounds.

The West has several titlecontending teams beyond defending champion Golden State, which eliminated the Mavs in the conference finals last season.

Dallas is in a group of nine teams that started the day within one loss of each other. It covers teams currently fourth, the final spot with home-court advantage in the first round, through 12th, two positions out of the postseason play-in tournament.

The 13th-seeded Los Angeles Lakers, with LeBron James and Anthony Davis, are just another two losses behind those bunched-up playoff hopefuls.

Jalen Brunson was crucial to Dallas’ playoff run alongside Doncic last season, but decided he wanted his own starting role as a point guard and left for the New York Knicks in free agency.

While the Mavericks traded for a solid No. 2 scorer in Christian Wood in the offseason, they haven’t been able to win without Doncic this season.

Dallas was 0-7 without Doncic going into the game against the Jazz, when Wood was expected to return after missing eight games with a fractured left thumb.