Kyrie Irving Is Back After 19 Months — Mavericks Star Set for Macao Preseason Return

LAS VEGAS — Do the math for a second: March 3, 2025 to today is 584 days. That's how long Kyrie Irving has been out of a real NBA game. And sometime in the next 72 hours, in a casino arena in Macao, that's finally over.

Mavericks coach Dusty May told reporters this morning that Irving will play in one of the two NBA China Games against the Houston Rockets — Oct 9 or Oct 11 at The Venetian Arena — his first action since the night he tore his left ACL in the first quarter against the Sacramento Kings and still stayed to shoot his free throws before walking off in tears. The nine-time All-Star is 34 years old now, and the recovery has been anything but smooth: a calf strain last December set the whole thing back eight weeks, and the Mavs officially ruled him out for the entire 2025-26 season on February 18.

"I think I'm ready to go out there and kick some butt."— Kyrie Irving

Here's what makes this bigger than one player's comeback story. The Mavericks went 26-56 without him last season — a lost year in every sense — and now they're building around Cooper Flagg, the 2025 No. 1 pick and reigning Rookie of the Year, in a full post-Luka Doncic era. Flagg told Reuters he's "really excited to be able to share the court with Kyrie. He's obviously a special, special player." There's something genuinely moving about a 19-year-old generational prospect treating his first minutes next to Kyrie like a privilege. The kid gets it.

And the other side of the Macao matchup is just as loaded. Kevin Durant is on the Rockets now. The NBA's official X account posted a KD-Kyrie mutual respect video earlier this week, because of course the league knows what it has: two of the most skilled scorers of their generation, former teammates, sharing a court again — one of them coming off one of the longest layoffs in recent memory. Then they do it all again in Houston on October 21, when Dallas opens its regular season against these same Rockets.

None of this is about Macao minutes counting for anything. It's about whether a 34-year-old guard who averaged 24.7 points, 4.8 rebounds, and 4.6 assists in 50 games the year before the injury still moves like that guy — and whether the calf, the knee, and the last eight months of rust let him. The smart move is to treat whatever happens in these two games as a medical milestone, not a referendum. But if you know Kyrie at all, you know he's not going to Macao to ease into anything.

One business note: ANTA cleared him to play, and his KAI 3 "Macao Hearts" colorway drops October 10 — the day between the two games. Whether you find that tacky or brilliant depends on your relationship with sneaker economics, but the timing is undeniable.

Last Night: Five Games, Two Comebacks

We covered every second of last night's five-game slate in the full night wrap — here's the morning-after version in about ninety seconds.

Pacers 123, Timberwolves 112. Tyrese Haliburton played basketball for the first time in 472 days — the Achilles tear in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals, in case that scar isn't fresh enough — and did it at his Iowa State homecoming. Seven points, six assists, a steal, two blocks in 16 minutes. "It's the first game, but it's got to slow down," Haliburton said, which is exactly what a point guard who just got his career back would say. Jarace Walker's 10 assists against one turnover was the quiet line of the night.

Bucks 128, Thunder 126. Oklahoma City blew a 24-point lead, which in October means exactly nothing and still feels terrible if you're a Thunder fan. Myles Turner went for 19 in a Milwaukee uniform, Aday Mara dropped 22 and 6 for OKC, and Kel'el Ware's 18-and-12 double-double keeps making him one of the more interesting young bigs in the East. SGA cruised at 17 and 5, low-stress mode, as he should.

Trail Blazers 123, Warriors 118. Golden State dressed nine players on the second night of a back-to-back — Curry, Green, Horford, Podziemski and Melton all sat — and still needed Dalen Terry's 43-minute, 23-9-8 marathon to keep it close. The real story was in Portland's whites: Damian Lillard and Ja Morant in a Blazers uniform together, and by all accounts Lillard looked like Lillard — his ability to get past defenders was the better sign than the scoring. Jeremy Sochan's 10 fourth-quarter points sealed it.

Bulls 124, Suns 117. Magic 122, Grizzlies 118. Finals in both, with no real reporting to chew on — which in preseason is usually the honest answer. Full details in the night wrap.

Tonight: Four Games, One Achilles Reunion

The preseason slate runs four deep tonight, and the headliner is in Boston — Cavaliers at Celtics at 4:00 PM PDT. The reason to watch: Jayson Tatum said earlier this week he's "fully healthy" after his own ruptured Achilles, so tonight is the first preseason look at the league's other Achilles comeback — two of the game's best players returning from the same devastating injury in the same season. Mitchell Robinson is also already making an impression on his new Celtics teammates, which is one of those October sentences that either means everything or nothing. Peyton Watson is game-time-decision for Cleveland with a hamstring.

Also tonight: Nets vs. 76ers at Barclays (4:30), Heat vs. Pelicans at the Kaseya Center (4:30), and a Lakers-Kings rematch — we've already got the full preview, so we'll keep this brief and let that piece do its job.

Injury Notebook

Tobias Harris is questionable for San Antonio's October 20 opener — and that one matters, because it's the Western Conference Finals rematch against Oklahoma City. He'll be re-evaluated when the preseason ends on October 16, which gives the Spurs exactly four days to decide what their rotation looks like for the most emotionally loaded game on the early schedule.

Jusuf Nurkic will miss Utah's season opener, per reports this week. Brandon Ingram still has no timetable with the Clippers — his rehab is being described as "week-by-week," though he is doing light shooting in Hawaii camp. That's a week-old update dressed as a status report, and for the Clippers' sake, let's hope the next one comes with a date.

Around the League

Dame looked like Dame. The early reviews on Lillard's Blazers debut keep circling the same point: the scoring was encouraging, but the movement was the news. A guard at his stage, coming off everything he's been through, getting past defenders like the calendar says 2019? That's the kind of preseason signal you actually pay attention to.

Steph Curry gave up alcohol for the season — per Ayesha, via reports this week. At 38, in year 18, after a back-to-back where the Warriors rested him, that's either a man squeezing every last drop out of his prime or a man who knows exactly how much he has left. Probably both.

Braiden Bell's attorney says the Blazers' firing could cost the franchise "a boatload of money." The legal fight over Bell's dismissal is officially in the lawyers-saying-things-on-the-record phase, which usually means it's about to get more expensive before it gets quieter.

Opening week countdown: 12 days. October 20 — Spurs at Thunder, the WCF rematch, the night the season actually starts feeling real. October 21 — Warriors-Lakers and Mavericks-Rockets in Houston. Preseason is fun, but that week is when the futures tickets start sweating.