‘It Was Incredibly Special’: Kyrie Irving Scores 26 Of 35 After Halftime As Dallas Mavericks Beat Houston Rockets

DALLAS — Kyrie Irving scored 26 of his 35 points after halftime on Friday night, leading the Dallas Mavericks back from an 11-point third-quarter deficit in a 116-111 win over the Houston Rockets at American Airlines Center. He played 34 minutes, 53 seconds, after averaging 27.0 minutes across his first four games this season.

Irving shot 12-of-19 overall, 5-of-8 from deep, and 6-of-6 from the line, and he added 4 rebounds and 9 assists. It was his highest-scoring game since Feb. 25, 2025, when he had 35 points at the Los Angeles Lakers, six days before he tore the ACL in his left knee on March 3.

The win was the third in a row for Dallas, which improved to 4-2 and handed Houston its first loss of the season in the opening game of Emirates NBA Cup group play. Cooper Flagg finished with 33 points, 9 rebounds, and 6 assists, and the Rockets fell to 5-1.

Irving’s first regular-season game back came Oct. 21 in Houston, where he scored 15 points in 24 minutes of a 128-110 loss. Before that night, he had gone more than 19 months without playing in a regular-season game.

“It was incredibly special. Obviously, it’s the in-season tournament. Depending on which team you play against, some teams are taking it serious, some teams aren’t,” Irving said. “But I think it was a good kind of pressure environment to have early in the season, where it wasn’t just about me playing well or Cooper playing well. We really needed to have possessions where they mattered and guys were making the right plays or weren’t making the right plays, and we just had to learn from it.”

“So we’re gonna be in a lot of games like this down the stretch throughout the year. I don’t know when, but hopefully we can get some 20-point wins where we don’t have to go into it,” Irving continued. “But when we’re going into some end-of-the-game things, we gotta be able to be sharp, be focused, and I felt like we were able to do that. And the guys were really leaning on me for some emotional support, some verbal communication, and I feel like I offered that.”

“And also just was confident within the game, like we just had to break over that hump. We were within seven points, and it was five points, and it was 10, it was nine,” Irving added. “It’s just we had to break that seal off, and I felt like we did it with our defense and also just having smart possessions on the offensive end.”

Kyrie Irving Takes Over The Second Half Against Houston

At halftime, Irving had 9 points on 4-of-6 shooting, and Dallas trailed 51-44 after a 31-17 second quarter. He opened the third quarter with a pull-up in transition and two threes from 25 feet, scoring all of Dallas’ first 8 points of the half.

The Mavericks finished with 28 fast-break points, 18 more than Houston. Irving went 8-of-13 from the field after the break, including 4-of-6 from three-point range.

“I think my communication and also my aggression and just starting the third quarter off at a very high level, especially pushing the transition and getting the ball over half-court [at] 21 seconds or 20 seconds, whether it was a miss or make,” Irving explained. “Just paying attention to the details on the defensive end. They’re always looking to catch you sleeping. Amen’s always looking to catch you sleeping on the offensive glass while he’s crashing. KD’s always looking to be around the basketball when they’re kind of going through their possessions where they haven’t scored in a minute.”

“And Ime does a great job of letting Fred just free flow into the offense, as well as Marcus Smart,” Irving noted. “And just learning throughout the minutes and possessions through the games, just some of their cues that they’re mentioning to each other, some of their nonverbal communication, their eyes, their eye fakes. They continue to press you and press you and press you and wear you down. I felt like we had to kind of take that energy and reverse it on them and just make sure they played on their heels.”

Houston’s lead reached 11 points late in the third quarter. Irving then scored 10 of Dallas’ first 17 points in the fourth, and his 28-foot pull-up with 7:01 left put the Mavericks ahead 91-88 for the first time since the second quarter.

With the game tied at 100, Irving hit a 17-foot pull-up off a Flagg pass with 2:08 remaining. His four free throws in the final 6.2 seconds stretched the lead to five.

The Rockets played without Alperen Şengün and Reed Sheppard, who both sat with low back soreness. Houston entered Friday with the NBA’s top offensive rating, 123.4 points per 100 possessions.

“Just psychologically, when [we’re] hearing Şengün’s out and Reed’s out, we have a whole game plan for them, and then we kind of take our foot off the gas pedal a little bit,” Irving said. “So we just had to readjust. [It’s] a human element of it, but when you’re in competition, you can’t do that. And I feel like we picked it up after halftime and just had a few conversations with some guys, and we all agreed we weren’t playing our best basketball.”

Irving, 34, is the oldest player on a roster that includes the 19-year-old Flagg and the 20-year-old rookie Morez Johnson Jr.. Earlier this week, Mavericks coach Dusty May credited Irving with encouraging Johnson after a mistake rather than criticizing him.

“If you just saw how much he puts into this game, and that factored in to being on a young team and bringing it every day and helping the group find solutions to problems, and do it in the manner in which he does it is, I mean, it’s incredible,” May said. “That’s why his stat line, 35, 9, and 4, that looks great and it’s obviously impressive, but his leadership and his grace with his teammates [is] even more impressive to me.”

Irving made six more free throws Friday and has now hit 55 in a row. No active NBA player has a longer streak, and Irving’s own previous best was 49 straight, from March 15 to April 20, 2021.

The 35-point outing was the 89th of his career. It moved him past DeMar DeRozan and into a tie with Charles Barkley for 41st place all time. Irving also posted a 30-point game while shooting at least 50% from the field, 40% from three, and 90% at the line for the 81st time, matching Larry Bird for the eighth-most such games.

Irving’s Minutes And Health In His Return From The ACL Tear

Irving played 9 minutes, 48 seconds of the fourth quarter, sitting only from the 5:26 mark until 3:14. Through his first four games, he had shot 49.1% from the field and 33.3% from three-point range.

“It’s just a great feeling when you know the work translates into games. It was the first four games, five games, I really felt like my body has been in a good place,” Irving said. “But there’s more that I can get out of my instincts. There’s more that I can unlock in my game. There’s more of an attack mindset I can keep going to. There’ll be times I’m out on the perimeter, I’m not really cutting or I’m not really active, and I just don’t wanna be stagnant on those possessions.”

“And even when the possessions change from offense to defense, I really wanna be able to push myself. And that just comes with reps and comes with rhythm and also making the choice to get out and run despite just maybe some of the mental fatigue or physical fatigue,” Irving continued. “And just not thinking about, like, hey, how do I feel right now? It’s just should be about playing tonight and just playing the possessions out, and that’s probably the first game of the last four where I felt like I was just playing out the basketball game to my possessions IQ without thinking about, all right, how does my leg feel or how do I feel physically.”

In the opener at Houston, Irving played 24 minutes. His total Friday was more than 10 minutes above his average through the first four games.

“I feel great, I feel great. It’s great to build up to this moment. I think thinking about how we were talking about the minutes restriction, the first game versus Houston, and how it’s kind of controlling my internal frustration,” Irving said. “But I trust our coaching staff, I trust our medical staff in being able to develop a great dialogue and getting to this point, and just take patience, and I’m gonna enjoy it, but also give myself a lot of grace as I’m continuing to get better throughout the season.”

Irving has played five regular-season games for May, who took over in Dallas this offseason after the Mavericks finished 26-56 last season. The franchise also overhauled its front office, hiring Masai Ujiri as president.

“Well, I’ll keep it short, ’cause I don’t want any of these other coaches around the league to get jealous, but he’s a great guy in terms of, I’m not trying to give away all his sauce and stuff like that,” Irving said. “He’s a great guy in terms of being able to identify what skill sets he has on his team. He’s done that very early. He’s very confrontational in terms of what he wants out of you. And I think it helps in terms of just establishing our concepts and what we need to do game to game and preparation-wise. He’s a big preparation guy, which I appreciate as well.”

Friday’s game opened West Group A play in the Emirates NBA Cup, where Dallas is grouped with Houston, Denver, Phoenix, and Utah. The Mavericks host the Utah Jazz on Nov. 6, then visit the Denver Nuggets on Nov. 24 and the Phoenix Suns on Nov. 27.

“But I think when I first answered this question a few years ago about the [in-season] tournament, I wasn’t that excited about it, like other veterans or other guys in the league, but I think I understand the concept now in terms of what it means for fandom of basketball and also for the franchise and just getting your legs up underneath you,” Irving said. “I think we saw the Knicks last year going against the San Antonio Spurs, and we saw that in the final. So there is some correlation to playing well early in the season and picking it up and then being able to have some early success, and that leads on to later down the line.”

The Knicks beat the Spurs in the 2025 NBA Cup championship game and again in the 2026 NBA Finals. Dallas hosts the Sacramento Kings on Monday at American Airlines Center, with tip-off set for 7 p.m. CT.