Let’s check on Dallas Mavericks fans.
In the wake of the earth-shattering Luka Doncic trade, things could be…uh, going better. Fans parading coffins and creatively constructed signs around their beloved Dirk Nowitzki statue are being joined outside by those who tried to go to the game, but got thrown out of the stadium for screaming “FIRE NICO” on the Jumbotron. It’s a humanitarian crisis, a totalitarian regime. By keeping the whole process under wraps before dropping the trade in the middle of the night while the team was on a lengthy road trip, the organization clearly understood a bad reaction was coming, but did they expect it to be Nowitzki himself showing up at a Lakers game bad?
Is it a revolt? No, Nico. It’s a revolution.
I feel for Mavs fans, and I frankly don’t know if I would react any more favorably if the Boston Celtics traded Jayson Tatum for Bam Adebayo and a first-round pick. But things are getting dire out here, and the Mavericks’ out-of-touch response to their fans’ completely valid freakout has me wondering if the NBA needs some honest-to-goodness legal reforms to protect fans. It’s been out of touch, out of whack, and threatening to drive us all out of our minds.
Absurd press conferences introducing their new players without the GM who acquired them present. Completely tone-deaf quotes from owner Patrick Dumont saying “I’m a big Luka fan. My family are big Luka fans. I have a really deep appreciation for what he brought to this team”… about a guy they just traded with no warning, in the middle of the night, less than a year after he led them to the NBA Finals. If they were actively trying to make this worse, I’m not sure what they would even do differently. And while I’m not here to fix it, surely we can make this a little better, even if at this point I’m hesitant to suggest the Mavs won’t continue to find ways to make their responses even more tactless.
Unfortunately, like any unmitigated public relations disaster, we don’t have a time machine to go back and fix the problem. But obviously, if any team is considering trading their best player in their mid-20s for a worse player in their 30s… don’t. But that ship has already left port, sailed into an iceberg and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So what is to be done?
Step one: say sorry.
The first step in correcting for any big mistake is apologizing, which the Mavericks probably think they can’t do less than two weeks after making the trade. But that’s only because they want to look like serious people, but it would be possible to apologize and remain serious. You’d just have to fire all the people who helped make the decision, so Nico Harrison, Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont. But that might be complicated, since two of those people own the team, so…
Thankfully, it’s also possible to apologize without remaining serious. And we already know they aren’t serious people, because… *gestures to the trade they just made*. So just apologize, fire Nico so he takes the fall for the billionaire owners, and move on. That’s a good start.
Step two could be a bit more material. Once they’ve issued the most confusing apology in human history, the Mavericks ownership should probably start the world’s most obvious bribery campaign. Free merch at every game. Kyrie bobbleheads everywhere. Hell, Adelson and Dumont should probably start funding public works projects across Dallas. Anything they can do to buy off the fan base, even if it’s obvious.
Look, I’m not morally into bribery either, but I think getting your fan base back on board is worth a semi-obvious sustained PR stunt. But there’s also the possibility that there is nothing the Mavericks ownership could do to fix this thing in the short term; I’m not even sure winning a championship would fix it. It’s an affront to the past, present and future of this team — an affront to the fundamental laws of NBA nature. What can they do in that case?
They could also go full-desperation mode, pull a page from the Lakers’ book and try to retroactively fail Davis’ physical, thereby voiding the trade and starting possibly the most confusing legal process the NBA has ever seen. It wouldn’t work, but it would show the fans they really, really understand how wrong the thing they did was, and maybe earn some goodwill back for trying.
Or, perhaps, the answer is to pretend it all didn’t happen. Go full authoritarian mode and rewrite the history books. There never was a Luka. There has always been a Davis. Any mention of the trade is met with “what trade?” or “we’re looking into that, thanks for bringing it to our attention.”
It sounds crazy, but get this: it’d only be the second-craziest thing they’ve done this season. So as a last resort, I don’t see why not.
Oliver Fox
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