MACAO — Kyrie Irving needed 14 seconds to score in his first game since tearing the ACL in his left knee on March 3, 2025. He drove for a reverse layup on the opening possession Sunday at The Venetian Arena, and the Dallas Mavericks went on to beat the Houston Rockets 132-115.
The win split the two-game NBA China Games 2026 series in front of a sellout crowd of 11,711. Houston won Friday’s opener, 135-117, while Dallas held Irving out.
Kyrie Irving Scores 14 First-Half Points In Long-Awaited Return
Irving finished with 17 points, 2 rebounds, and 3 assists on 6-of-13 shooting in 21:56. He made 2 of his 6 three-point attempts and all 3 of his free throws. Fourteen of his points came in the first half, and he sat out the fourth quarter with the Mavericks ahead by 10.
Irving’s daughter, Azurie, his parents, his sister, his nephew, and his brother-in-law were in Macao for a game that came more than 500 days after his last one. His first possession went to a play Mavericks coach Dusty May called for him, and he attacked after Jabari Smith Jr. switched and Amen Thompson started on him.
“A lot of emotions leading into it,” Irving said. “I’m grateful that Dusty called the first play for me, had my mind made up. Just to attack and watching film on the last preseason game we played, just kind of adjusting to their physicality. I saw Jabari switch, Amen started on me, so just trying to take advantage of the matchup as much as I can. And I saw that baseline opened up a little bit.”
“Just felt good to get that out the way,” Irving continued. “I was imagining how I was going to go, dreaming about how I was going to go, and just glad that I got that out the way.”
“Just incredibly grateful for my teammates as well and their support,” Irving added. “Just seeing them rise up off the bench to celebrate me as well, that always feels good, and God is truly the greatest. So just being able to perform at a high level, that felt amazing. So just humbled myself, but also just being aggressive and trying to look like myself again.”
May did not expect Irving to play this well after so long away from games. A couple of Irving’s misses, in May’s view, were off by a centimeter.
“It was just impressive, his physical condition, his mental condition,” May said. “I’ve said it from the first time I watched him in the workout, he’s an artist. He’s a jazz musician. And so just to see the way he thinks the game, manipulates a game, and even there were a couple shots that looked great were off by a centimeter that obviously they’re going to drop once he gets into game rhythm.”
“But I didn’t expect him to play this well after being off so long, just the rhythm of the game,” May continued. “But once again, it’s just a testament to his work.”
Max Christie cited Irving’s line in his own postgame availability. Christie was glad to witness the opening basket outside of basketball, he said.
“It was super cool,” Christie said. “I mean, the first possession of the game he came out and scored in Kyrie fashion, so that was really, really cool to see. Just outside of basketball, like, that was really cool to see, to be able to witness that, and he looked phenomenal. Six-for-13, 22 minutes in this first game, 17 points, so it can only get better from here. So he looked good. It was very, very fun to watch.”
Houston played without Kevin Durant, Alperen Şengün, Fred VanVleet, and Steven Adams, all of whom did not dress. Şengün had 16 points, 10 rebounds, and 10 assists in the opener, and VanVleet scored 17 in his return from a lengthy injury layoff. Jae’Sean Tate was not with the team.
Santi Aldama, Morez Johnson Jr., Dereck Lively II, Marcus Sasser, and John Poulakidas did not play for Dallas by coach’s decision.
Dallas Mavericks Pull Away With Runs In The Second And Third Quarters
Houston led by as many as 7 in the first quarter, going up 22-15 on a Bogdan Bogdanović 3-pointer with 3:24 left. Dallas closed the period on a 13-5 run, and Christie’s driving layup with 3.5 seconds left gave the Mavericks a 28-27 lead.
The Rockets went back in front 31-28 early in the second quarter before Dallas scored 11 straight points. P.J. Washington hit a 3-pointer, Naji Marshall finished a fast-break dunk, and Washington threw down an alley-oop from Cooper Flagg. Irving scored in transition, and Daniel Gafford made two free throws for a 39-31 lead with 7:47 left in the half.
Gafford’s three-point play with 4:05 left pushed the margin to 49-34. Dallas led 58-51 at halftime.
With 7:04 left in the third quarter, a Marcus Smart 3-pointer gave Houston a 72-71 lead, its last of the night. The game was tied at 77 with 5:32 left in the period when Dallas answered with a 15-2 run. Marshall started it with a 3-pointer and a pull-up jumper, and Christie finished it with a transition 3-pointer that made it 92-79 with 2:38 to go. Marshall had been assessed a technical foul earlier in the quarter, with 9:10 left.
The Mavericks carried a 95-85 lead into the fourth quarter. Houston’s reserves cut it to 99-94 with 9:43 left before Zaccharie Risacher scored 9 of his 16 points in the quarter on 4-of-4 shooting. A Tarik Biberovic layup with 23.2 seconds left produced the largest lead of the night, 132-113.
Dallas shot 48.2% from the field, 37.5% from 3-point range, and 89.7% from the free-throw line, where it went 35-of-39. The Mavericks scored 32 points off Houston’s 22 turnovers. They also outscored the Rockets 50-40 in the paint and 24-11 in fast-break points, and they finished with 28 assists to Houston’s 19.
Houston won the rebounding battle, 50-46, and outscored Dallas 27-23 in second-chance points.Thompson grabbed 6 offensive rebounds.
Christie scored 14 points on 4-of-7 shooting, 8 of them in the third quarter. Dallas went back to the film from Friday’s loss before the rematch, and the Mavericks fixed a lot of what they saw on it, according to Christie.
“I would evaluate us, honestly, we turned in the right direction,” Christie said. “I think for us, we lost the first game and then we got to win the second game. I think we really improved on a lot of the stuff that we wanted to correct from the film from the first game, and so we played well together. I thought our camaraderie was really, really good. I thought we encouraged each other a lot. I thought we played hard. I thought we played with some physicality, so overall just improvement for us.”
“Personally, against this team, it’s just their level of physicality, their offensive rebounding, and kind of the toughness and scrappiness that they play with,” Christie continued. “I think in the first game we did do a good job of matching that, and I think tonight we did a little bit better job matching it. I think that it helped us win the game.”
Marshall added 14 points and 3 steals, Washington scored 10 in 16:18, and Gafford had 9 points on 3-of-3 shooting. Flagg finished with 14 points, 4 rebounds, and 7 assists, going 7-of-8 from the free-throw line, after scoring 19 in the opener. Sunday was the first game Flagg and Irving have played together.
Smart led Houston with 20 points on 7-of-13 shooting, including 4-of-9 from 3-point range, and added 5 rebounds and 4 assists. Reed Sheppard scored 17 with 5 turnovers. Thompson had 14 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists on 4-of-12 shooting, and Smith had 14 points, 9 rebounds, and 4 assists. Oscar Tshiebwe scored all 12 of his points in the fourth quarter.
The paint touches were good for Houston and the assist numbers were high, Rockets coach Ime Udoka said, even with the missed shots.
“Some positives and negatives at times,” Udoka said. “I think, like I said, we rebound well, we know that about ourselves. We did that in these two games. The paint touches were good, the assist numbers were pretty high, albeit we missed some shots tonight. But playing at the faster pace, we had good carry over from the first week and a half, two weeks of training camp.”
“A little too sloppy at times, and that comes with some new guys being out there together, some young combinations out there, and then conditioning in general,” Udoka continued. “So we saw too many, way too many turnovers both nights, 22 tonight, 21 the other night, and gotta clean that up and get back to where we were a few years ago, which was top five, and take care of the ball. So all things to work on, continue to work on, and we get another game to do it.”
Zaccharie Risacher, Sergio de Larrea Stand Out For Mavericks
Risacher shot 7-of-13 for his 16 points and scored 14 of them in the second half on 6-of-8 shooting. Two of his 3 rebounds came on the offensive glass, and both ended in tip dunks. He had 9 points and 8 rebounds in the opener. Dallas acquired Risacher from the Atlanta Hawks on July 19 in a three-team trade that sent Ryan Nembhard to Atlanta.
Risacher is still learning how to play off his teammates, in May’s view, with several Dallas combinations in Macao that had never played together.
“We challenged Zach to simply rebound better, and he got a couple offensive rebounds,” May said. “He’s got great instincts for the ball. So he’s really just learning how to play off of his teammates, and then you throw PJ in, you throw Kyrie in, and so these guys are all still learning themselves. There’s several combinations that have never played together, and we’re figuring it out on the fly.”
“But I thought in the second half of both games, he settled in and just looked like he was playing at ease,” May continued. “Looked like he was lost in the flow of the game, so he’ll continue to get more and more comfortable with our terminology, our schemes, as teammates, and we expect him to improve as we get going.”
Sergio de Larrea finished plus-34 in 22:25 off the bench, the best mark in the game. The rookie guard had 9 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, and 2 steals after posting 11 points and 6 assists in the opener. Dallas acquired the draft rights to de Larrea, the No. 25 pick in the 2026 NBA Draft, from the Los Angeles Lakers on June 24.
May described de Larrea as a great leader who is still developing his voice.
“You look at the plus-minus and he’s pretty good,” May said. “Consistently helping his teammates be better than they would when he’s not on the floor. He’s a great leader, he’s still developing his voice, but he’s just a guy that plays to win every single possession.”
“He’s smart, he’s tough, he’s playing high-level games … so he just continues to get better, and he’s a sponge,” May continued. “So we anticipate him continuing to grow and develop.”
Dwight Powell played 14:58 behind Gafford and finished with 3 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and a plus-14, while Lively and Aldama sat. Powell keeps the second unit organized, May said, and generates good looks for a group built around young players like de Larrea, Christie, and Risacher.
“I think when you watch the game, it’s fairly obvious that his ability to connect and keep the group organized, and when you look at the age of, especially, our second unit, and you take Sergio and Max and Zach and all these young guys, and it just gives us another pressure release outlet, and he generates great looks,” May said. “He’s just a very, very smart veteran basketball player.”
“So there’s a number of different components to development of young players, and putting them out there with guys who are trying to assist them, make them better, screen well for them, it’s just a decision,” May continued. “We felt like we’re playing well with him on the floor. The groups continue to function well, and so we’re very, very comfortable.”
Dusty May Says Mavericks Still Learning How To Play Around Kyrie Irving
Everyone sometimes stops and watches Irving instead of cutting to open bigger gaps for him, May said, and Dallas was slow getting into its actions when Houston grabbed second shots.
“When the games opened up and we’re rebounding it well, those guys were dynamic in the open court,” May said. “When we were giving up the second shots and deflating plays, we still weren’t getting into our actions quick enough. I think sometimes everyone kind of just stops and watches Kyrie instead of, I think especially where we are, I think a little bit more cutting to open up bigger gaps for him and a little bit of off-ball movement will make the game simpler for him, because he’s gonna make the right decision.”
“So we’re still working on our spacing and our relocations and figuring out what our schemes are gonna be when we have our nucleus,” May added. “But it’s a work in progress, and so, but he gives you a lot of options.”
May came away from Macao believing Dallas has a good mix of veterans who have been through the battles and young players eager to fit in.
“I think we have great depth,” May said. “We have a good mix of veteran players that have been through the battles, and then they’re complemented with some young, eager guys that are trying to fit in in any way, shape, or form. And so it just provides an interesting dynamic. We’ve got these young, youthful guys that probably still need to get stronger, and then you have some older guys who we really need to contribute to helping them get up to speed if we’re going to be the type of team we’re capable of being.”
Across the floor, Udoka saw Dallas mirroring Houston, with young players growing alongside veterans coming back. He singled out Flagg, the 2025-26 NBA Rookie of the Year.
“With Dallas, you know more of their young guys, Cooper Flagg specifically, growing, showing that growth, but very similar to us, they have some veterans out there that are coming back as well, and so a nice mix that they have,” Udoka said. “We’ll see what they look like throughout the season, but Flagg is showing a lot of promise.”
Udoka was an assistant coach with the Brooklyn Nets during Irving’s time there and saw him working out over the summer. Irving looks the same now as he did in practices and games every day in Brooklyn, according to Udoka.
“He looked back to his normal self,” Udoka said. “I saw him out in the summer working out quite a bit, and he’s back to being who he is. His first official game back on the NBA floor, but it’s been quite a bit of time. They didn’t want to rush him back, I don’t think, last year. But he looks like he has the same things I saw in practice and games every day when we were together in Brooklyn. So it’ll only get better as he gets his rhythm back in really big games.”
Smart expected Irving to look good, and the matchups Smart wants are against the best players on the floor.
“It was great to see somebody coming from the injury that Kai came from to get back on the court, right?” Smart said. “I know we compete, but you wanna compete against the best. You want everybody to be out there. So for him to be back out there, it was great to see. He looked good, but we expected him to look good, right? So very happy for him.”
Dallas returns home to host the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday at American Airlines Center, with tip-off set for 7 p.m. CT. The Mavericks close the preseason against Atlanta on Friday, also at 7 p.m. CT at American Airlines Center.
