Former NBA All-Stars' takes about Kyrie and Luka are aging horribly to start season

Will Miller

Dallas Mavericks v Denver Nuggets / C. Morgan Engel/GettyImages

Despite their loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Tuesday night, the Mavericks have gotten off to a pretty exciting 8-3 start to the season. Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving have had a couple of rough shooting performances here and there, but overall the duo has led the team extremely well to start the season.

Doncic and Irving are doing a much better job at playing with each other this season.

The direct actions they are running together as well as the spacing they are providing for the rest of the offense is invaluable. They are even putting the work in on the defensive end as much as they can, and lots of people in the media are starting to take notice.

Former NBA All-Stars' takes about Kyrie and Luka are aging horribly to start season

They've also done a great job at changing the pace of play this year. Dallas has sought opportunities for themselves in transition that otherwise wouldn't have been possible if Irving and Doncic hadn't done a great job at pushing the pace and weren't in elite conditioning.

Despite this though, there are still plenty of doubters in regard to their pairing. Former Boston Celtics All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce went on their podcast, The Ticket and the Truth, to discuss the Mavericks ahead of of the season.

As you can see, Garnett retracted the statement that he made about Doncic and Irving being one of the best duos in the league right after Irving was traded to Dallas last February, and Pierce has been critical of the duo's ability to compete for a championship in Dallas as well.

Pierce definitively didn’t agree with Garnett in both instances, but it’s intriguing to see that both of the former Basketball Hall of Fame inductees are so pessimistic regarding the Mavericks’ duo working after such a small sample size last year.

So far Irving and Doncic are proving both Garnett and Pierce wrong this season, as their individual performances and leadership are breeding wins upon wins as Dallas has started 8-3 on the year.

Hopefully, Irving and Doncic continue to prove other talking heads in the basketball world wrong going forward, but even if they don’t we’ll have you covered, so stay tuned.

Will Miller

Will Miller is a senior contributor and is in his second year with The Smoking Cuban. Will has been following the Dallas Mavericks for over a decade and is currently working on getting a Bachelors in Science in Sports Journalism from the University of North Texas, as he is also covering sports for the North Texas TV station. While Will is opening up his coverage to cover other sports for UNT, basketball and the Dallas Mavericks are his true passion and he hopes to continue writing and producing Mavericks related content as his career continues. Will has very solid in-game analysis and knowledge about the intricacies of the game, and has a very broad understanding about the NBA as a whole. Going forward Will is looking to be more expansive in his coverage of the Mavericks beyond writing as well. Outside of writing about the Mavericks, Will enjoys hanging with friends, going to the gym, and watching other sports and live events.