Just a Game: The Luka Doncic Fiasco

The way “business” and “connection” conflict

Last year, I got sick around the time the Mavericks started making a playoff run. There was a good bit of having to lie around and not look at my cell phone: I’ve had migraines since I was in college, but there were month-long clusters for a while. On top of that, I was watching my soulmate-in-dog-form suffer dementia, which I can’t really begin to explain. He was toothless, deaf, blind, and really didn’t understand the world anymore— except for me. I had to be within smelling distance. (He hopped in the shower with me one day. He was an old fellow.)

Prince Pablo, my Beloved. ~2008-2024

So I’d never been a basketball fan— and then Luka Doncic changed everything. He was aggressive and playful: he had both rage and child-like glee. It WAS a game, and one he knew he was great at. It was like watching a dance where only one person knew the choreography, but he knew EVERY PERSON’S steps. I was living for post-game interviews with Barkley by the end of the championship series. And though Dallas lost, it didn’t FEEL like we lost. Some people get scared when the lights are brighter and the stage is bigger: Luka just played basketball.

I learned how to love the game, bedridden with a very sick Chihuahua friend on my lap. I had never “gotten” basketball, but I was so relieved he played for US, for the METROPLEX! I could continue my habit of blindly cheering for Dallas no matter what. (Remember I’m crazy? I’m so loyal/delusional that I said, with my mouth. “I don’t know, I think we should give Schottenheimer a chance to prove himself.” That’s the kind of loyalty I show my hometown and my teams.)

I mean, he makes this first shot basically in the air, horizontally, as he’s going down. Triple-double to knock OKC out of the playoffs

Which is why I say with a heavy heart that my new Doncic jersey should be in any day now, and it’s a very different (weeks ago, I would have said “the wrong”) team. It feels weird and wrong to abandon a whole team over one player, but as I’ve been reading articles and think pieces and angry texts from my friends, I think I understand what’s happened for me and for us.

Nico Harrison is an outsider. He made this trade in the dark. Luka was the best player on either team in the championship last year— if we’d had a little more maturity with the first five, I think we would have won (though let me be clear: I think that they played most games pretty well, and they won two. Lively and Washington showed up, and Kyrie Irving was brilliant). But instead of thanking Luka for playing, playing through injury, for his ferocity in big moments— he just implied Luka is too fat and too lazy.

This guy. The guy who’s single-handedly responsible for making me a basketball fan.

First, Shaq didn’t start every season like a chiseled god— he played himself into championships year after year. Luka has been playing six years and was all-pro for the last five. You can’t tell me that “conditioning issues” are that big a deal when it’s your guy. They also said he’s injury-prone. I love AD and I think he’s one of the better complementary players in the league— he’s clearly an All-Pro/All-Star, both literally and figuratively— but he got injured in his first game in a Dallas uniform. It’s been hard to watch him have to suffer in this middle of all this while Harrison keeps doubling down on why Luka isn’t worth the money.

You know, when life-changing trades are made (Luka had just closed on a house in Dallas), most owners and coaches come out and wish the other person nothing but the best and thank them for what they’ve brought to their area. It’s jarring that Harrison can’t just be polite or shut up. There is no justification that will make people happy at this point.

Actual news alert I got to my phone.

I’m a Cowboys fan. I understand what it means to have a bad owner who gives away precious players for no good reason. Jerry, at least, always says something great about them as they go. But I had not even watched basketball until I watched Luka last year. He made it magic. So here’s the problem and here’s why it’s not just a game: I feel like a member of my pack was exiled and I didn’t have a choice. Our sports teams are proxies for our identity: they say where we come from and what kind of attitude and bluster we like. (Tell me you don’t know what a “Philadelphia fan” is like. You do.) But Nico Harrison is a cold businessman, which means he just turned something that made me feel like I belonged and connected me back home to the place I’m from, into a corporation, and a poorly run one at that.

Luka’s LA debut

I bought my first LA jersey. (Sorry, Dad.) My husband and I have decided to switch fandoms. That’s a sentence I never thought I would say about any sport, because I’m a ride-or-die, I love my team no matter what kind of record they have. But if Nico Harrison sees things like this, I hope he hears this takeaway: HE is the one who was disloyal. This was a betrayal, pure and simple. By sending my favorite player away, you sent me away, too. It makes the phrase “Mavericks Fan For Life” ring hollow because we all know, Luka wanted to begin AND end his career in Dallas. He was a franchise superstar. “For life”? Sure. Luka for life. #lffl

And man, was it good to see Luka and LeBron smiling out there on the court together. Long may he run— or walk, if that’s what he wants to do, because when you’re that good, you get to trust yourself. And I trust him. Sorry Dallas. You pushed me even further away— and I’m absolutely devastated, as I’ve now lived outside my hometown for longer than I lived there, to feel even the ghost of more distance.

Would rather lose with Luka than win without him… but I like winning WITH him, too.