Michael Porter Jr.'s firsthand account offers an encouraging glimpse at how Irving is moving as he prepares to return after missing the entire 2025-26 season.
Kyrie Irving is expected to be ready for opening night. That has been clear for months because the Dallas Mavericks held him out for the entire season so he could return at full strength instead of rushing back for a lost year.
The question was never whether he would play. It was what he would look like when he returned.
The offseason has produced no shortage of optimistic reports, but Michael Porter Jr.'s account stands out because it came from playing against Irving rather than watching him from a distance.
The Nets forward revealed on his YouTube show, Curious Mike, that he recently played pickup with Irving. His description should have Dallas feeling good about what is ahead.
"I was hooping with Kyrie yesterday, and this is off of his ACL," Porter said. "That dude was so cold, bro. I couldn't believe how he was moving out there."
The conventional worry for a player returning from an ACL tear after missing an entire season is rust. It has been roughly 16 months since Irving last appeared in an NBA game and the assumption is that a 34-year-old guard will need weeks or months to look like himself again.
However, there is a compelling case that the opposite could be true here. Most players returning from this injury come back after nine or 10 months while still building strength and confidence in the knee and trying to compete at full speed. Dallas gave Irving nearly double that amount of time after announcing on Feb. 18 that he would not return during the 2025-26 season. He arrives at camp not as a player who is still rehabbing, but as one who has been training at full speed for months.
Porter's description supports that idea. He watched Irving get downhill into traffic and finish anyway, which is the exact skill a torn ACL usually limits.
"He was getting to the lane, there's all seven footers in there, and he was somehow finishing with the left," Porter said. "Bro, it was nutty. It was crazy."
That kind of movement is critical for a player coming off knee surgery. Changing direction in a crowd, absorbing contact and finishing with the off hand all require full trust in the joint. Players who are still protecting a knee do not attempt those shots, let alone make them.
It also helps that Irving's game has never depended on traditional athleticism. He thrives on his handle, balance, footwork and touch. Those skills stay sharp with repetitions in the gym and do not erode in the same way explosiveness can.
None of this replaces seeing Irving play in an actual game. The real test will come when he faces NBA defenses in October rather than playing in a summer run. Load management will still be part of the plan, particularly with Dallas facing a league-high 16 back-to-backs.
For a fan base that has spent well over a year waiting, however, the picture Porter painted is exactly what it wanted to hear. The time away may not have cost Kyrie Irving anything at all.
