Mavericks continue to win Kyrie Irving trade as former wing suffers playoff collapse

The Kyrie Irving trade has been a revelation for the Dallas Mavericks, and Dorian Finney-Smith's unfortunate downfall elsewhere further confirms this. Finney-Smith was a cornerstone of Dallas' trade with the Brooklyn Nets that brought Irving to the Mavericks in 2023, and it couldn't be aging any better for them.

Dorian Finney-Smith's career is crashing in real time

Finney-Smith signed a massive four-year, $53 million deal with the Houston Rockets after a productive stint with the Los Angeles Lakers (after the Nets traded him at the trade deadline last season), but his time with Houston has been far from productive. He averaged career-lows across the board, putting up just 3.3 points, 2.5 rebounds, and 0.4 steals in 16.8 minutes per game while shooting 33.3 percent from the field and 27 percent from downtown.

Finney-Smith became a non-factor for the Rockets in the 37 games that he played, partially due to injuries, and the postseason has further illustrated this. Ime Udoka has benched him for the Rockets' first two games against the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs, and this is a bad news for a player who was supposed to be a major difference-maker in Houston.

He'll have the chance to earn Udoka's trust again beginning tonight for Game 3, and Mavericks fans can only frown when seeing how much has changed for him. It was only four years ago that he played a key role helping them advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 2011, and his fall from grace is hard to watch.

From 3-and-D monster to playoff benchwarmer

This is not the production that you want from a player you expected to play a significant role after signing him in free agency. The Mavericks clearly sold on him at the right time, and the full details of the Irving trade look like a landslide in favor of Dallas a few years later.

The other player the Mavs gave up in this deal, Spencer Dinwiddie, is out of the NBA, and they clearly got the far better end of the deal by making this move when they did.

He went from one of the top role players in the Western Conference to someone that his head coach doesn't even trust to play during the playoffs, and the Mavericks got ahead of his decline by including him in the trade for Irving.

This was once viewed as a major loss for the Mavericks, but they clearly made the right call by moving on when they did. Injuries have quietly derailed his career, and him being the main player in a trade for Kyrie Irving is looking like a disastrous move for Brooklyn.

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