New Dallas Mavericks president Masai Ujiri said that he is excited about Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg playing with NBA star Kyrie Irving.
Irving has been sidelined since March 2025, when he tore his ACL, an injury that forced him to miss the entire 2025-26 NBA season. After the Mavericks drafted Flagg with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, he played his entire rookie season without Irving on the court with him. Despite not playing with Irving, Flagg had an incredible first season in the NBA for the Mavericks, winning the NBA Rookie of the Year award after his impressive debut year in the league.
Thankfully, Irving is expected to make a full return to the Mavericks next season. With Flagg already having shown that he is a budding NBA superstar, the opportunity to pair him with one of the NBA’s top point guards in Irving is something that is very exciting to Ujiri, the Mavericks’ new president of basketball operations.
Masai Ujiri is Excited About Kyrie Irving Playing with Cooper Flagg
After a bad start to the season, the Mavericks fired former president and GM Nico Harrison, who was never able to recover after the disastrous 2025 trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and draft compensation. After the season ended with the Mavericks missing the playoffs for the second straight year following an NBA Finals run in 2024, the team hired Ujiri as the team president. Ujiri, who was the architect of the Toronto Raptors‘ NBA Championship squad in 2019, is expected to bring a calm and stabilizing presence to a Mavericks franchise that desperately needs to repair the damage that Harrison did to it.
Speaking to Mavericks chief communications officer Gina Miller in an interview after being hired by Dallas, Ujiri was asked what excites him most about taking the Mavericks’ president job. According to Ujiri, the prospect of seeing Flagg playing with Irving is something that really intrigues him.
“I think getting Kyrie back is going to be so important for this ballclub. Phenomenal, fantastic player. I think it’s going to actually help Cooper Flagg with how we play. The coaches are going to be in charge of all of that,” Ujiri said.
Cooper Flagg is Going to be an NBA Great
Flagg, who is still only 19 years old, had an absolutely incredible rookie season, winning the league’s top rookie award after putting up 21 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 4.5 assists in 70 games. He also set the NBA record for the most points scored by a teenager when he had 51 this year, becoming the youngest player in NBA history to score 50+ in a game.
The sky is truly the limit for Flagg. After a phenomenal rookie season, the Mavericks believe he can take an even bigger step forward in 2026-27, and with Irving feeding him the ball, there is a big opportunity available for Flagg to do just that.
The Mavericks may have missed the playoffs the last two years, and they may no longer have Doncic on their roster, but with Irving back and with Flagg being the team’s new focal point, it’s a brand new era of Mavericks basketball with a proven winner in Ujiri at the helm.
Masai Ujiri Excited About Cooper Flagg Playing With Kyrie Irving