The Dallas Mavericks are doing their best to insist that they did not disrespect Luka Doncic (any more so than they already did).
Dallas sparked an uproar earlier this week with a hype video posted to social media ahead of their first game of the second half of the NBA season. The video showed game footage which was seemingly edited to remove all traces of their former star Doncic, whom the Mavericks traded to the Los Angeles Lakers several weeks ago.
The unconvincing edits appeared to show Doncic being grayed out and covered up with an awkwardly large Mavericks logo. You can see the screenshots here.
In response to the sharp backlash from fans, the team addressed matters. In a post to his X page, rapper Dorrough, who starred in the hype video and composed the original song featured in it, took responsibility … but also said that Doncic was never edited out of the video in the first place.
“As a lifelong Mavericks fan and someone who takes great pride in the game of basketball, I would never be part of anything intended to remove, censor, or disrespect Luka Doncic,” Dorrough wrote. “To clear up any confusion, Luka was not censored from the video. The edits in question involved other former players who are no longer on the roster.
“The video was produced by my team with the intention of energizing and uniting Mavericks fans, and there was never any intent to erase any player’s contributions to the franchise,” added Dorrough. “Luka is and always will be a part of Mavericks history.”
You can read his full statement below.
Even assuming that Dorrough is correct that it was other former Dallas players who were censored and not Doncic, the whole edit job still came across as very awkward and clumsy. Meanwhile, at least two ex-Mavs (Josh Green and Maxi Kleber) were still entirely visible in the video despite all of those edits.
The timing could not have been worse for Dallas either as many fans are still rightfully upset over the team’s poor handling of the Doncic trade (with many even protesting in the middle of games). The Mavericks have since deleted the hype video too, but it appears that the damage (even more of it) has been done.
