Can basketball make you happier?
There’s only a few times in life, maybe a handful if you’re lucky, where the elation of the moment transforms into pure joy. The birth of a child. The time you won the national championship as a teenager. That time when you hiked Mount Shasta and felt the euphoria of life rushing through you.
For some of us, that includes the wonderful spring of 2024 when Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving led the Mavericks all the way through the playoffs to the Finals.
Before the playoffs
that year, people said the Mavs weren’t good enough. They said Kyrie was washed, that he was a locker room cancer. They said Luka was too fat, too injured, too bad on defense. They said the roster couldn’t compete with the best. But we proved them all wrong. We went almost all the way. All we needed was another year.
The beautiful thing about fandom and sports is that we get to belong somewhere, to something bigger than us. We made it, we proved them wrong. We just needed another year.
Well, none of us touched that court, none of us made a basket, none of us led the league in scoring. But we played our part, we all tell ourselves and smile, because we know that a fanbase can affect the energy of a team. And the energy of a team can affect winning directly.
Kyrie Irving felt that energy. Do you think he would have stuck around and settled in Dallas the way he has if he didn’t feel welcomed and appreciated? From staff and leadership to the players and all the way to the fanbase. Do you think Kyrie Irving would have stayed when the past regime traded a guy he called his brother, if he was unsure about the support he had?
Do you think he would have stayed through injury if he didn’t know the fanbase had his back and already considered him a legend for what he had done for the Dallas Mavericks franchise?
In order to thrive as a player, in order to perform up to your very best and stick to it through adversity, you need to feel safe. And to get there, you need a little something called trust. A word we throw around way too much, claiming this team has trust, this team needs it, we have a focus on trust on our team.
But real trust comes from consistency. From not leaving when things are hard and from the energy you approach a situation or a team with.
Kyrie Irving has settled in a way in Dallas that he never has before in his career. Sure, he’s won a Championship and was already a legend before even stepping foot on the Mavs.
But in Dallas, he found something we’ve never really seen him achieve to this degree. Peace. It’s been talked about a lot since his first season here, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant.
In Dallas, Kyrie Irving has come into himself. He has become the man and the role model he seemed to work towards becoming, but the trust and sense of safety and belonging that he found in Dallas enabled him to move beyond the drama that had followed him up until then.
Much to the credit of both the local media, which approached him without the bias he was used to, and especially the fanbase.
The Dallas Mavericks fanbase loved Kyrie from day one. The energy from the fans, the support and the embrace he received was beautiful to watch.
In the beginning, the Luka fans-Kyrie Fans feud was a little weird to witness, but soon most realized that the two of them were not competitors, they were each other’s biggest fans. And so Kyrie settled down in Dallas, safe in the knowledge that he was supported even through mistakes. That’s how you create trust, by the way. And a winning culture.
And as Kyrie is looking almost better than ever to start this season, the infectious energy surrounding him reminds us of the good old days.
By sticking around through the bad and the ugly the last few seasons, Kyrie is reciprocating a gift to the fanbase.
Every time we see him, he reminds us of the joy we used to feel before those bad days. It is the gift of excitement. The gift of belief. The gift of being allowed to reminisce.
The gift Kyrie received from the fanbase when he arrived in Dallas, the gift of trust and support, that’s the gift he is giving back in kind right now.
Because the joy we lost is slowly returning. And once again, it is Kyrie Irving, who is the catalyst. Can basketball make you happier? Kyrie Irving can.
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