Kyrie Irving Expected To Make Season Debut With Brooklyn Nets On Wednesday

Kyrie Irving is coming back.

The seven-time NBA All-Star is expected to make his season debut for the Brooklyn Nets Wednesday night when they visit Indiana, The Athletic reported Monday. After Wednesday, Irving’s next opportunity to play would be Jan. 12 in Chicago.

“Everyone knows who he is and what he does; but I think he’ll be able to bring that good pace and movement and ball movement to the group,” Nets guard Patty Mills told reporters Monday. “At times we get stagnant and he’ll be perfect for that.”

Irving has missed the first 34 games of the season for the Nets, who are 23-11 without him — one game back of Chicago in the East.

Fellow superstars Kevin Durant and James Harden can’t wait to have Irving back on the court.

“I mean, have you watched him play? He’s a master,” Durant said last week.

“He can score 60 percent, 70 percent of his shots if you don’t guard him. And he’s a high IQ player. It’s just a matter of him getting his legs up under him, and his wind up under him. And for us, we’re going to run plays for him and we’ll try to look for him and we play team basketball.”

“But he can adapt and do anything out there so we don’t worry about him.”

James Harden, who has notched back-to-back 30-point triple-doubles in the team’s two losses, also raved about Irving after he debuted at practice last Wednesday.

“Elite,” he said of Irving’s play level.

Asked how he looked, Harden said, “The same Kyrie, we’re just happy to have him back and we got to get him on the court and get this thing going.”

Head coach Steve Nash will now be tasked with coming up with a road lineup featuring Irving and a home lineup without him.

Due to being unvaccinated, Irving cannot play in New York or Toronto — leaving 21 road games left in the season for him to play in.

“I may be a little naive but I think we just keep it really simple,” Nash said. “Kyrie plays on the road and we figure out how he re-joins the group, finds his rhythm and his place in the team. And when we come home, we’re back to normal the way we’ve been all year.

“So we just try to keep it really simple, don’t over-analyze it or complicate it, try to enjoy it and try to put him in a position to succeed and to enjoy what he’s doing and then the positives of having him back can be high and that can also have an effect on us when he’s not in the lineup and guys are not having as much of a burden in every single game.”

For his part, Irving says the goal remains to compete for a championship alongside Durant and Harden as long as the window remains open.

“With us getting together at this time in our careers, we wanted to take advantage of it,” Irving said Wednesday. “We have a lot more left in the tank, but obviously our age between us three, us being at a certain level of mastery in this game, is only going to last for a certain amount of time.”

The Nets remain the betting favorites to win the NBA title.

“Brooklyn has remained the favorite to win the NBA Championship all season, with little to no movement seen by the Kyrie Irving news,” said Matt McEwan, national sportsbook expert and Editor-in-Chief at Sports Betting Dime. “Sportsbooks likely believe Kyrie will be able to play full-time once the NBA playoffs hit, and know the team is talented enough—see their [23-10] record thus far—to get to the playoffs with or without Irving.”