In 2021, Kyrie Irving went on Instagram Live and told fans, “Don’t believe that I’m retiring,” as his vaccine standoff with the Nets raised questions about his future. Five years later, the Mavericks guard is far more open about the idea.
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Asked on Monday when he plans to retire, Irving said he’ll use the next few seasons to decide whether the modern NBA is still worth it.
“You have social media and gambling, which is running rampant, and it’s not the same NBA that I fell in love with as a kid, and I’m very much aware of that,” he said. “And I don’t say that as a negative thing.” Kyrie is preparing for his 14th active season, and his return comes after he missed all of 2025-26 with an ACL tear.
He was clear about what has changed. “The game has changed. It’s become less human. It’s more robotic,” Irving said. He added that over his next few years he will ask himself whether he loves “all the hoopla that goes into it,” even though he loves the playing and the competition.
Kyrie Irving said his “eternal flame” for basketball still burns, and that he wants to be present for his family. He also said he does not necessarily share the longevity goals of players like LeBron James, while Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry keep playing into their late 30s.
Irving was specific about how the league has shifted. He said when he entered the NBA in 2011, there were no “tipping and gambling meetings,” and mental health was a “foreign subject” nobody discussed.
Gambling has shaped his career in a more direct way too. During the 2022 playoffs, Celtics fans relentlessly taunted him in Boston, and ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski warned that gambling was making arenas more hostile. Woj acknowledged that Irving and Boston had “a different dynamic,” given Irving’s history with the Celtics, but argued that fans betting on nearly everything were making players more frequent targets.
Social media has also followed him for years. In November 2022, data from the betting site BetOnline ranked him the NBA’s most hated player on Twitter, in 28 states after a controversy over a retweet.
None of this is entirely new for Irving. In 2018, he said he hoped to be done by his early-to-mid 30s because of everything that comes with NBA life. He’s 34 now.
For now, his immediate plans are less dramatic than his comments suggest. Irving is excited to finally play alongside Cooper Flagg, and the Mavericks need him healthy.
The retirement question is about the next few years, not the next few months. Irving has told fans before that he is not leaving, and this time he is saying the opposite is possible.
The message is clear: he still loves the game but is unsure about the world around it. Whether the gambling and social media debate pushes him toward the exit or only changes how he plays his final seasons will depend on how he feels about the “hoopla” after a year back on the court.