Kyrie Irving

Published April 19, 2026 · By The Basketball Fans Editors

Full name

Kyrie Andrew Irving

Born

1992-03-23, Melbourne, Australia

Nationality

American

Height

6′2″ (188 cm)

Position

Point guard

Teams

Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Dallas Mavericks

Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals, the final 53 seconds. Score tied at 89. Cleveland trails the series 3-3. Stephen Curry is defending. Kyrie Irving comes off a screen at the right wing, dribbles right, steps back behind the three-point line, and rises over Curry with a high-arching jumper that clears the rim cleanly. The Cavaliers go up 92-89. They win the game. They win the championship. They complete the only 3-1 NBA Finals comeback in league history. LeBron James, in his postgame press conference, calls the shot the most important basket in Cleveland sports history.

That single basket is the simplest answer to why Kyrie Irving has, in 2026, a basketball reputation no other player of his generation can match. He is the most complete ball-handler in NBA history. He owns the single most important shot of the last 25 years of NBA basketball. He is also one of the most controversial players in modern American sports, the figure at the center of multiple league-altering off-court news cycles since 2017, and the active player whose career arc has been most distorted by what he has chosen to do off the court.

He is, in 2026, 34 years old, in his fourth season with the Dallas Mavericks, rehabbing a torn left ACL suffered March 3.

Melbourne, West Orange, and the loss of his mother

Kyrie Andrew Irving was born March 23, 1992 in Melbourne, Australia. His father, Drederick Irving, had been a Boston University basketball player who at the time of Kyrie’s birth was a professional in the Australian National Basketball League with the Bulleen Boomers. His mother, Elizabeth Larson, was a Native American (Sioux) Olympic-track-trained athlete who had moved to Melbourne with Drederick in 1991. The Irvings moved back to the United States when Kyrie was two and settled in West Orange, New Jersey.

Elizabeth Irving died of sepsis when Kyrie was four years old. The death is the central event of his childhood, by his own account in multiple interviews including a 2018 ESPN Body Issue feature and his 2019 New York Times Magazine profile. Drederick raised Kyrie and his older sister Asia alone, working as an investment banker at JPMorgan in Manhattan. Kyrie has said in interviews that his mother’s death is the structural reason he became a basketball player; his father had told him repeatedly that basketball was “what your mother would have wanted you to do.”

He attended Montclair Kimberley Academy and then St. Patrick High School in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He was a top-five national high-school recruit by 2010. He committed to Duke in October of his senior year.

Duke and the toe injury

Kyrie played one season at Duke (2010-11). He played 11 games. In a December 2010 game against Butler at the Izod Center, he tore a ligament in his right big toe and missed the next three months. He returned for the NCAA Tournament. Duke lost in the Sweet Sixteen to Arizona, with Kyrie scoring 28 points in the loss.

He averaged 17.5 points and 4.3 assists across the 11 games he played. He was a unanimous All-ACC Freshman selection. The Cleveland Cavaliers, then in the first season of the post-LeBron-departure rebuild, took him with the first overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft. He was 19 years old.

Cleveland (2011-2017) and the 2016 ring

Kyrie’s six seasons in Cleveland produced four All-Star selections, one Rookie of the Year award (2012), and the championship that defines his career. The 2014-15 Cavaliers, with LeBron James returning to Cleveland after his four-year Miami stay, reached the NBA Finals. Kyrie tore his left kneecap in Game 1 and missed the rest of the series. The Warriors won in six.

The 2015-16 Cavaliers were the team that did it. They finished 57-25, beat the Pistons, Hawks, and Raptors in the playoffs, and reached the Finals against a 73-9 Warriors team that had broken the all-time regular-season wins record. The Cavs went down 3-1. Then Draymond Green was suspended for Game 5 (covered in detail on our Draymond Green biography). Cleveland won Game 5 in Oakland, Game 6 in Cleveland, and Game 7 in Oakland. Kyrie averaged 27.1 points and 3.9 assists in the series. The Game 7 dagger, with 53 seconds left, is the basketball moment that will lead his Hall of Fame video.

LeBron won Finals MVP. Kyrie has said in multiple interviews since, including on the JJ Redick podcast in 2024, that he never expected the Finals MVP to go to anyone but LeBron and was at peace with the vote. The relationship between the two players, however, did not survive the offseason.

The 2017 trade demand

In July 2017, Kyrie privately requested a trade from Cleveland. He told Cavs GM Koby Altman that he no longer wanted to play with LeBron James. The reasoning, as Brian Windhorst documented in his 2017 book Return of the King, was a combination of: (a) Kyrie wanted to be the offensive centerpiece of his own team rather than the second option behind LeBron; (b) the relationship between the two players had been deteriorating since the 2016 Finals; and (c) Kyrie wanted to play in a market where he could pursue off-court business interests (later revealed to include his shoe-design partnership with Nike and his interest in film production).

Cleveland traded him to the Boston Celtics on August 22, 2017 for Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Žižić, the Brooklyn Nets’ 2018 first-round pick, and a 2020 second-round pick. The Celtics gave up the better long-term assets in the deal. Kyrie played one full season in Boston (2017-18), led the team to the conference finals, missed the second-round-and-beyond games of 2018 because of a knee surgery, and played 67 regular-season games in 2018-19 before the team lost in the second round.

The famous “I’m staying” moment came on October 4, 2018, at a Celtics season-ticket holder event. Kyrie told the crowd, on a microphone, that “if you guys will have me back, I plan on re-signing.” He did not re-sign. He left for the Brooklyn Nets in July 2019 in a sign-and-trade alongside Kevin Durant.

Brooklyn (2019-2023): the vaccine, the antisemitism, the Durant fallout

Kyrie’s four years in Brooklyn produced three full seasons, one playoff series win, and three of the most controversial off-court news cycles of any NBA player in the modern era.

The vaccine refusal (October 2021 to March 2022). New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for indoor athletic events meant Kyrie could not play in Brooklyn home games unless he was vaccinated. He refused to be vaccinated. The Nets, after publicly stating he could not be a part-time player, then reversed and let him play road games only. He missed the team’s first 35 home games of the 2021-22 season. The mandate was lifted in March 2022 and Kyrie returned full-time. Brooklyn lost in the first round to Boston, swept 4-0.

The antisemitism controversy (October-November 2022). Kyrie tweeted a link to a 2018 documentary, Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America, that contained antisemitic content (including Holocaust denial). The Anti-Defamation League, the NBA front office, and Nets ownership publicly demanded he repudiate the film. He initially refused. The Nets suspended him for eight games. Nike terminated his shoe deal. He apologized in a November 3 Instagram post. He was reinstated November 20.

The Kevin Durant fallout (2023). Kyrie’s relationship with Kevin Durant, the basketball relationship that had brought him to Brooklyn in 2019, did not survive the controversies. Both players publicly requested trades within ten days of each other in February 2023. Brooklyn dealt Kyrie to the Dallas Mavericks on February 5, 2023, and Durant to the Phoenix Suns three days later.

Dallas (2023-present): the 2024 Finals run and the ACL

Kyrie’s first full season in Dallas was 2023-24. He paired with Luka Dončić as the second star in the Mavericks’ offense. The 2023-24 Mavericks finished 50-32 and made a stunning playoff run: beat the Clippers in six in the first round, beat the Thunder in six in the second round, beat the Timberwolves in five in the conference finals, and reached the NBA Finals. They lost to the Boston Celtics in five games. Kyrie averaged 21.0 points and 5.2 assists in the Finals.

The 2024-25 season was the chaotic one. The Mavericks traded Luka to the Lakers on February 1, 2025 for Anthony Davis. Kyrie, who had been Luka’s offensive partner for two years, became the team’s primary creator overnight. He averaged 25.4 points and 6.8 assists across the rest of 2024-25. The Mavericks lost in the first round of the 2025 playoffs to the Lakers, with Luka beating his former team in five games.

The 2025-26 season ended early. On March 3, 2026, in a home game against the Sacramento Kings, Kyrie tore his left ACL in a non-contact play in the third quarter. He underwent surgery March 11. The recovery timeline announced by the Mavericks medical staff in late March 2026: full return by approximately mid-2026-27 season.

He is, as of April 2026, in rehab at the Mavericks practice facility in Dallas.

The legacy

Kyrie Irving is, by every standard ball-handling metric, the best dribbler in NBA history. Allen Iverson, Steph Curry, and Tim Hardaway are his closest comparisons, and only Iverson is in the same conversation. He has, in 12 healthy NBA seasons, been a 9-time All-Star, 2-time All-NBA Second Team selection, 2014 Rookie of the Year, NBA champion in 2016, and the player whose Game 7 dagger over Stephen Curry is the single most-replayed jumper of the post-2010 era.

His career counting numbers through April 2026: 16,825 points, 4,318 assists, and 1,049 steals across 758 regular-season games. He averages 23.1 points and 5.7 assists per game.

The off-court controversies have, by every retrospective basketball-historical assessment, cost him roughly two MVP-caliber seasons of basketball production. He has not, in any season after the 2017 trade demand, played 70 games. He is, by basketball-historical convention, the player whose career has been most defined by the gap between what he could have been and what he chose to be.

He is also, by every direct teammate account from Cleveland through Dallas, the most generous and most personally loyal star of his generation. His 2017 trade demand was framed publicly as a falling-out with LeBron; the post-2017 LeBron and Kyrie relationship has, in fact, been warmer than the public story has suggested. The two have been seen at multiple All-Star Weekends together, have collaborated on the Lakers-versus-Mavericks playoff series in 2025, and have spoken publicly about doing the next phase of basketball business together at some point.

Kyrie’s contract runs through the 2027-28 season. The 2024 Finals run is, until further notice, the high-water mark of his Mavericks tenure.

Signature Shoes

Kyrie’s Nike line (Kyrie 1 through Kyrie 8, 2014-2022) built a reputation for the best court feel of any guard shoe of the decade, with the Kyrie 1 through 6 drawing the most consistent praise from players and reviewers. The Kyrie 5 “Taco” colorway is one of the most recognizable limited releases of the 2010s. Nike and Kyrie parted ways in 2022 following the antisemitism controversy; he subsequently signed with Reebok.

Shop Kyrie Irving shoes at JD Sports →

Gear

Shop official Kyrie Irving jerseys and fan gear on Fanatics, or browse The Book of Basketball.

Shop Kyrie Irving gear on Fanatics →

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Sources

• Basketball-Reference: Kyrie Irving.
• Brian Windhorst, Return of the King: LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Greatest Comeback in NBA History (Grand Central, 2017).
• ESPN, Adrian Wojnarowski, coverage of the August 2017 trade.
• The Athletic, Sam Amick and Anthony Slater, “The Brooklyn Nets, the vaccine, and the suspension” (November 2022).
• Sports Illustrated, Lee Jenkins, “Kyrie at Duke and the toe injury” (March 2011).
• ABC broadcast of Game 7, 2016 NBA Finals, June 19, 2016.