We're now one week removed from the shocking news that Luka Doncic, the Mavericks' generationally talented franchise cornerstone was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for 31-year-old Anthony Davis.
Saturday afternoon marked the Mavericks’ first home game since the trade heard 'round the world, with newly acquired Davis making his team debut. Rumors spread this week of a planned protest to be held outside the American Airlines Center at noon prior to the 2 p.m. matinee tipoff against the Houston Rockets. We showed up early to see if anyone would follow through, and boy did they.
Oddly enough, not everyone was mad.
“It’s like, ‘Are you a Mavs fan or a Luka fan?’” asked a lady named Kendall. At an early brunch to fuel up for an afternoon of sports-rioting, she chimed in to tell us that she wasn’t bothered by the trade and she laughed at people she saw wearing Mavs jerseys to her church on the Sunday following the news.
But Kendall was likely in the minority around the stadium on Saturday. In Downtown, you could hear chants echoing from outside the arena in all directions.
“This Nico guy is a fall guy,” says a man walking swiftly in the opposite direction from the noise, as he’s held a half-drunk cappuccino in one hand while venting into a phone in the other. “You know he can’t just make a trade like that.”
He surely wasn’t talking to anyone outside the AAC where Harrison was public enemy No. 1. There were a couple hundred Mavs fans perched just in front of the Dirk Nowitzki statue, with most hoisting signs and letting out their feelings about the news. Swaths of media members flanked the group that got louder and louder each time the red light flicked on a TV camera.
The majority of the signs were either targeted against Harrison, or in favor of Doncic. One read “Judas. Brutus. Benedict. Nico.” Another spelled out “Nico” with: “Negligent, Incompetent, Corrupt, Oblivious.”
The chants alternated every minute or so. “Fi-re Ni-co” was a crowd favorite, as was “We-want-Ni-co” in a sort of medieval village shaming sort of way.
“Loy-al-ty” drew out many emotions from the protestors, as did “Lu-ka Ma-gic.”
But it wasn't all just just words. One fan held a life-sized cutout of Harrison with a clown nose affixed to it. Later, fans brought out a casket to lay before the Nowitzki statue, as papers were passed out with a QR code that took people to a Change.org petition to get rid of not only Harrison but the Mavericks' current ownership group, led by Miriam Adelson.
“I’m getting J6 vibes, boys,” said a teenager meeting up with his friends. They wore different iterations of a Doncic jersey with the Mavericks name and logo X-ed out in duct tape. “This is awesome.”
Earlier this week, an ESPN report said that Harrison had received death threats in the wake of the news and that security would be ramped up for today’s game. There did seem to be a higher concentration of cops around the premises compared to a typical game in the old days.
“How bad can it be if they’re saying ‘we love Luka?’” asks one indifferent guard standing behind the crowd.
Just a few moments later, ironically, an 18-wheeler stopped in front of the crowd and laid on its horn incessantly. Crossing guards and cops were screaming at the driver to move along and stop blocking traffic. One cop went around the front of the truck to get to the driver side door before the truck sped off, to the delight of the rowdy crowd.
Later, an older man shouted “Bosnia supports Luka,” before unfolding a Bosnian flag and wrestling his way into view of the TV cameras. He probably wasn't caught by the cameras though, mostly because a bald man with a megaphone lead the crowd into a frenzy nearby.
The megaphone man called for a total boycott of the Mavericks.
“I think an empty arena shows them what we’ve got,” he screamed.
Inside the Arena
Regardless of the pleas outside, the arena inside was near capacity“People can be mad but tickets stayed expensive,” says a Rockets fan in a vintage Hakeem Olajuwon jersey. “I thought I’d get a good deal.”
The merch store inside AAC felt like the scene of a perfect crime. All ties to Doncic had been scrubbed clean. The No. 77 jerseys and t-shirts that once littered every inch of the arena were gone without a trace, replaced in part by No. 3 Davis jerseys.
Even if Doncic’s face is gone from the arena, his name was inescapable. Thousands of fans inside donned Doncic jerseys, with discourse over his absence remaining the top conversation topic like an 18,000 person group therapy session.
As game time neared, Davis’ entrance was met with a big ovation, a pleasant surprise. Even if the trade was a bad deal, Davis is an incredible player with a highly decorated resume. He began the game with an alley-oop assist to Daniel Gafford, followed shortly by a block on Alperen Sengun that led to a fast break Mavs dunk. Davis' first points came on a tough fadeaway over Amen Thompson, leading to a dizzying sequence of five straight buckets. He screamed “I’m here!” to the crowd at the end of his first quarter flurry.
For most of the first three quarters, Davis was nothing short of transcendent. He showcased every reason why he was the highly touted No. 1 pick of the 2012 draft, the reason he was targeted by LeBron James to join the Lakers before their 2020 championship run and the reason he was one of the youngest players included to the NBA’s Top 75 Players list in 2021.
That being said, he also showed the reason so many remain skeptical of him as a reliable franchise player. Towards the end of the third quarter, Davis fell to the floor while grasping his midsection. He went to the locker room and didn’t return to the game, citing a no-contact injury. He downplayed the injury in the postgame press conference, but it reignited conversations about his health and availability on a game-to-game basis.
Regardless, the Mavericks defeated the Rockets rather decisively in a competitive game. Even with the protests and reactions to the Doncic trade, the arena felt like a normal Mavs game for the most part, with the crowd seemingly as invested as ever.
It will likely be quite a while before we know fully how this trade plays out, but for now at least, it seems there are still many ready to be Mavs fans for life.
