Kyrie Irving will hit unrestricted free agency for the first time in his career in only a few days. In years past this would have come with the assumption that he would've been one of the most sought-after players in the league and the bidding war for his services would be crowded. In reality, that is not the case. At all. Irving's ugly, public stand-off with the Brooklyn Nets over the antisemitic video he tweeted out and the subsequent trade to the Dallas Mavericks has killed off pretty much all interest in his services.
Really, the Mavs are really only in on him because they traded picks and players to get him and don't want to consider that a sunk cost trade just yet. The widely-held expectation around the NBA, as reported by Adrian Wojnarowski this morning, is that Dallas will be the only real suitor for Irving; the question is less where he'll end up and more how much money the Mavs will be willing to fork over (and for how many years). However, in what could be a pushback from Irving's camp to keep the veil of intrigue and boost negotiating position, Ramona Shelburne reported later on ESPN that the former All-NBA point guard would be taking "meetings." It was not specified with whom he would be taking the meetings, but he'll be taking them in an effort to find a place to spend the rest of his career.
Sure sounds like a guy trying to drum up interest. Unless Irving dramatically lowers his price point, which feels quite unlikely at this stage, very few teams will be interested in giving him hundreds of millions of guaranteed dollars when they don't know what guy is going to show up to the facility every day. Will it be the magical scoring guard who is capable of true wizardry at any given moment? Or will it be the guy who might blow up the PR team's day on a whim? Then you get into the injury history and the diminishing returns of pure scoring guards over 30 years-old and you see why nobody wants to give him a big long-term deal.
However, he'll be taking meetings. Let's presume that the meetings will surface once free agency starts and Irving lets everyone know he's willing to negotiate down. Which teams could go after him?
Dallas Mavericks
As previously stated this writer's opinion is that this whole song and dance is mostly aimed at making the Mavs pony up. Luka Doncic needs a co-star to win playoff games and that's why Mark Cuban made the big swing of trading for Irving in the first place. To do so and then let him walk over financial disagreements would be a… suboptimal look for the franchise and may hurt their relationship with their transcendent superstar. So they are the front-runners no matter what.