Sports
Mavericks 2026-27 schedule takeaways: Kyrie Irving’s return, tough opening stretch
Kyrie Irving could make his long-awaited return to the court as soon as Oct. 21 when the Dallas Mavericks open the regular season on the road against the Houston Rockets.
Irving last played on March 3, 2025, a game in which he suffered a torn left ACL. Irving missed all of last year recovering from the injury, a slog of a season for the Mavericks, who went 26-56.
If Irving can go on Oct. 21 — and all signs are that he’s completely healthy now — more than 19 months will have elapsed between his games for Dallas. The Mavericks badly missed his on-ball wizardry last season, when they finished 27th in points scored per 100 possessions.
Masai Ujiri, who was hired as the Mavericks’ president in May, said that he holds “great curiosity” to see Irving and Cooper Flagg play together. So do Mavericks fans, who should finally get that chance in a little more than two months.
Dusty May leaving for pros is familiar for Michigan fans
Austin Meek
Here are some other takeaways about the Mavericks’ 2026-27 regular-season schedule:
Difficult opening stretch
The Mavs can’t ease into things. Starting in October, they’ll be thrown into the deep end of the pool and asked to swim. The first six games on their schedule — at Houston, at Indiana, vs. San Antonio, at Miami, vs. Oklahoma City and vs. Houston — are against quality opponents.
The Rockets, whom the Mavericks face twice in October, have won 52 games in each of the past two seasons. The Pacers are coming off a down year, but they should have Tyrese Haliburton back in the lineup after he missed all of last season with a torn right Achilles. The Spurs, Heat and Thunder enter this season with title aspirations.
The Mavericks started 2-7 last season and finished 30 games under .500. They need to be better prepared to go right away this year, which won’t be easy with so many new faces. The Mavericks have a new coach — Dusty May, who left Michigan for the NBA — two first-round draft picks in Morez Johnson Jr. and Sergio De Larrea to incorporate, plus plenty of other players with previous NBA experience, like Santi Aldama and Zaccharie Risacher, who are first-time Mavericks.
Luka’s lone game in Dallas
Luka Dončić will play his only regular-season game in Dallas on Feb. 28, a matinee matchup that will be broadcast on ABC.
The Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers have played six times since the infamous Dončić-for-Anthony Davis swap in February 2025. The Lakers have won five of them.
The Mavericks will play on national TV 21 times this season, a healthy number for a team fresh off a 26-win campaign. Clearly, broadcasters believe there is a large audience for Flagg, the reigning Rookie of the Year.
One of the highlights of the Mavericks’ schedule is their Feb. 15 home game against the Philadelphia 76ers, part of a quadruple-header Presidents’ Day slate. That will be the first and only time this regular season that LeBron James comes to Dallas. James shocked the NBA world when he signed a two-year, $8 million deal with Philadelphia last month.
Notably, the Mavericks won’t play on Christmas Day for the first time since 2019. They weren’t one of the 10 teams selected to play on one of the NBA’s showcase days.
Here’s the Mavs schedule for the 2026-27 season pic.twitter.com/qPfPz6gwHe
— Christian Clark (@christianpclark) August 13, 2026
Road-heavy close
The Mavericks could spend much of this spring fighting for their postseason lives on the road: Ten of their final 15 regular-season games are away contests.
They begin their longest road trip of the season on March 17 in Oklahoma City. Then, they face San Antonio on March 19; the Lakers and LA Clippers in a March 21 and 22 back-to-back; and finally Minnesota on March 24. All five games on that road trip come against West playoff teams last season.
The Mavericks have missed the playoffs in each of the past two seasons. They have only missed the postseason three years in a row once this millennium, a stretch that lasted from 2016-18.
The Mavericks will play the Lakers on April 6 in Los Angeles, followed by road games against the Portland Trail Blazers on April 7 and the Sacramento Kings on April 9. That could be an enormous three-game West Coast road trip in the final week of the regular season.
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Sports
BBC Sport quiz: Who am I? Guess Premier League footballer No 26
Welcome to our Who am I? game.
The rules are simple. Each day there’s a new footballer and the challenge is to guess who they are in as few attempts as possible.
After each wrong guess you unlock a new clue. The fewer clues you need to get the right answer, the more points you score.
Three is a good score, four or five points is exceptional.
So take part and return for more tomorrow.
Today’s player and clues set by BBC Sport’s Flora Snelson.
After more quizzes? Go to our dedicated Football Quizzes and Sports Quizzes pages and sign up for notifications to get the latest quizzes sent straight to your device.
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Sports
Red Bull Salzburg: I made the right decision – Danny Rohl on swapping Rangers for Salzburg
Derek McInnes – who took Hearts to the brink of the title only to lose out on the final day to Celtic – replaced Rohl.
After Thursday’s Europa League exit to Polish side Jagiellonia Bialystok, McInnes has now failed to win his opening four games.
Rohl, speaking before that defeat, says: “Consistency, this is the most important thing. The environment is really demanding.
“Everyone who goes there, it doesn’t matter if it’s a manager, a player, a staff member, you have to understand this club is demanding and this creates a lot of pressure on people to make the right decisions.
“Nobody can prepare [for] this step. I cannot speak for the new manager but you can’t prepare. You have to be there and if you are there, then you really feel what it means.”
Rohl is focused and settled in Austria, returning to Salzburg after starting his coaching career at RB Leipzig under Ralph Hassenhuttl, before following him to Southampton.
He joins with Salzburg having failed to lift the Austrian Bundesliga title for the past three seasons – after winning the previous 10 in a row. They finished third last season.
Rohl’s move to Austria continues his history of bold career choices.
“This is the main part of my character, be brave. In the last three years I always pushed the limit,” says Rohl, who describes saving Sheffield Wednesday from relegation in 2023-24 as a miracle.
“I want to win titles and, after the season, I will measure myself on this result.
“When you take over, the main part is winning titles, the cup and the league and in the last few years we couldn’t win this as a club, this is one big goal.
“The second is of course developing young players.”
Lucas Gourna-Douath is the latest, the midfielder close to joining Hull, but a recent list underlines the quality of the production line at Taxham.
Karim Adeyemi moved to Borussia Dortmund in 2022 and joined Barcelona this summer while Erling Haaland’s season at the club in 2019-20 gave him the platform to join Borussia Dortmund. Sadio Mane, Dayot Upamecano and Dominik Szoboszlai are all alumni.
Former Bayern Munich and Germany coach Rohl adds: “Ten years ago we were the model for other clubs and now you see more and more on the market have this multi-club ownership and this is also now a competition for us.
“I want to win titles, develop young players, be attractive and I want to bring Salzburg back into the light in Europe.”
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Sports
Keely Hodgkinson: Great Britain’s Olympic champion ready for fight against fresh rivals
Werro survived an almighty scare on Thursday when she suffered a nasty fall in her semi-final, before later being reinstated in the competition.
Recovering impressively both physically and mentally from that shock, she showed great maturity to hold off Hodgkinson in the tense closing stages – while breaking a championship record that had stood since 1982.
“I knew I could be European champion one day. I hope to be faster and faster next year,” Werro said.
“When I was a child, my dad used to tell me I have to be a lion. I shouldn’t be shy and let other athletes go past me, so I decided to do a celebration with that when I crossed the line.”
In claiming her first senior international title, Werro has proven she is ready to rival the Briton for the sport’s biggest prizes for years to come.
“Audrey Werro is still young and that was a huge amount of pressure, even without the fall and the bruising,” former marathon world record holder Paula Radcliffe told BBC TV.
“She pulled it together and took the race by the scruff of the neck, which I think Keely did intend for her to do – but she thought she could come back at her.
“Werro just had another gear.”
Hodgkinson jokingly removed her medal in disgust when asked how she felt after the final.
Despite her disappointment, this was her 12th senior international medal and she continues to progress her times, lowering her personal best in all but her injury-devastated 2025 season across the past four years.
Hodgkinson has long maintained that she has felt the world record is within her reach.
Going forward, she will be aware that may soon be required just to win the titles she craves.
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