The Mavericks shoddily censoring Luka Doncic in a hype video completely backfired
Luka Doncic no longer plays for the Dallas Mavericks after he was shipped off to the Los Angeles Lakers in one of the biggest NBA trades in recent years.
If you ask the Mavs, he apparently never played for the team in the first place.
On Friday, the Mavericks released a hype video featuring Dallas rapper Dorrough (otherwise known as Six 3), and it didn’t take fans long to notice one glaring editing decision.
The team censored out Doncic during clips of highlights that included him, replacing him with a gray silhouette Dallas even went so far as to cover the face of Maxi Kleber, who was also sent to Los Angeles as part of the trade, with the Mavericks logo.
Whole lotta shooters that’s right WE MAVERICKS @DorroughMusic // #MFFL pic.twitter.com/jffRXq4gUp
— Dallas Mavericks (@dallasmavs) February 21, 2025
Naturally, Mavs fans — who were already miffed at the team’s decision to trade away its biggest star — were none too pleased with the decision, which they saw as an attempt to erase history.
Redacting Luka is so embarrassing. WTF are y’all doing https://t.co/oZKm6vlgAk pic.twitter.com/JvjED7WKdt
— MFFL (@Mavs_FFL) February 21, 2025
The most ludicrous edit in the history of moving pictures is at 1:52 https://t.co/pngOV5SOTq
— Mike Guardabascio (@Guardabascio) February 21, 2025
Bobby Karalla, who previously worked in digital content for the team, clarified on social media that scrubbing the images of players who have been traded across all media is standard practice across the NBA.
Former team guy here! Every year we had to get rid of images of traded players representing the team ASAP across all media. Social, website, videos, magazines, yearbook, etc. They don’t work there anymore. I know emotions are still high, but this isn’t anything out of the norm. https://t.co/6C2gSgqPHG
— Bobby Karalla (@bobbykaralla) February 21, 2025
While that’s fair enough, it seems like it should have been foreseeable that the already frustrated fanbase wouldn’t take too kindly to it. Given how much attention this drew, it clearly backfired.
Wouldn’t it have just been easier to find a few clips without Doncic?