DeAndre Jordan comes to Dallas next week for the first time since the summer debacle where he very publicly broke his verbal commitment to the Mavericks. It might be the highlight to the Mavericks' season, truthfully, giving 19,000 Mavericks fans a chance to take out their frustrations by booing the living hell out of him.
About 30 minutes before Tuesday's game last night against the Raptors, though, Dallas played this video above on the American Airlines Center jumbotron. The stands were only sparsely populated at that point and the video did not reappear during the game itself, but the arena had been opened to the public. I'm told the Mavericks likely won't re-air the video and that they were also not behind the makings of it, with the cartoon appearing in July by Cleo Dog Productions, not the Mavericks' usual video production company, The Well Creative. But none of that matters, because airing it publicly on your jumbotron is the same as an endorsement.
My plea to the Mavericks is that they back as far away from this video as they can. Don't play it again, don't play it next Wednesday and certainly don't support it in any way.
Look, we can all agree DeAndre Jordan handled his free agency poorly. It's his right to change his mind on a verbal commitment, but he could have done so much more gracefully in a way that didn't involve emojis or shutting out Mark Cuban. The Mavericks have said and insinuated that he was immature and petty. At the very least, he was reactionary, not taking enough time to realize all he really wanted to do is return to Los Angeles.
This video is trash, though. Jordan is a 27-year-old who handled his free agency poorly; he is not a monster, nor did he commit a crime. Sure, Mavericks fans will be vindicated when they rain down boos on Jordan next Wednesday every chance he's shown on the big screen. They deserve that much. They understandably feel slighted. But displaying Jordan as a sniveling crybaby and taking shots at nearly a dozen NBA figures is well beneath a professional basketball organization. It's as petty and immature as the Mavericks are accusing Jordan of being. It makes Dallas look so tiny and so far below Jordan. And it's casually homophobic, too. LeBron James and Dwyane Wade are "into" Chris Paul because ... they hung out? Because they went on a vacation with each other? That's such a tired cliche.
Prior to the Mavericks' game against them last Thursday, Mark Cuban said "he didn't give a shit" about the Clippers. Clearly, if this is the video Dallas is playing in their home arena, he does and they do. If you enjoy the video, that's up to you. There's a couple of funny moments buried in there, and I'm not saying any Mavericks fans personally need to forgive and forget what Jordan did this summer. But nothing good can come from this video publicly being broadcast in the American Airlines Center.
So far, this video has only been shown once in front of a smattering of fans and I hope it stays that way. That was already a big enough mistake.