On fandom, the Mavericks lottery win, Jamie Benn, and what actually connects us to a team

Happy Tuesday, welcome to one of my weird brain paths.

This isn’t technically a hockey piece, but I’m sure it’ll connect somehow.

The Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Draft lottery last night, turning a 1.8 percent chance in the lottery into the No. 1 pick and the opportunity to draft Duke’s Cooper Flagg.

For a franchise that botched so much with the Luka Dončić trade — a transaction where the Wikipedia article has more than 140 footnotes — and the ensuing public relations, it’s a second chance to win back some fans that they really didn’t deserve.

It’s also a series of events that has made me think heavily about fandom, and how we connect to a franchise or team through a single individual, and how for some that’s more of a vital bond that it is to others.

For example, I used to be a Mavericks fan. I lived in Dallas and adopted the Mavericks as my NBA team because of the local connection. I went to Dončić’s first game with the Mavericks, a preseason game against a visiting Chinese team, the Beijing Ducks, where Dončić had 16 points, six rebounds, and two assists as a teenager.

From there, like many people who lived in Dallas, I felt a connection to the Mavericks through Dončić. He was the reason I watched games, the guy who poured in points for me playing NBA 2K and it turned me into more of an NBA fan, someone who actually paid attention.

Once I moved back to Michigan in 2021, I remained a Mavericks fan because of Dončić. I wouldn’t watch every game, but I paid more attention to what happened with the Mavericks than any other NBA team. I closely watched the playoffs last season, rooting for Dallas in the NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics.

Then the Mavericks traded Dončić away and snapped any interest I had in the franchise. The Dončić connection was enough to bridge geographic divides after I moved, but once that move was made, any NBA interest I waned, effectively going dormant, likely until I pick up Detroit Pistons fandom based on my locale.

Now it’s cool the Mavericks won the draft lottery, I know lots of people who are thrilled and can be excited about this. I’m happy for my friend Bob Sturm, who wrote a great piece on the topic this morning over at Sturm Stack.

Mavs Win Big & Here Comes Cooper Flagg

But the Mavericks won’t win me back as a fan, that connection has snapped, it won’t be coming back.

For me, it’s made me think about the larger concept of fandom and whether it’s the team or a person that connects someone to a franchise, and how do those two things interact and evolve.

For me, I have two real fandoms in life right now — the New York Mets and Tottenham Hotspur.

Yes, make your jokes now, it’s a pitiful combination.

For me both of those fandoms were connected to an individual player that somehow bridged a gap to the actual team itself. As a kid, I grew up in New Jersey, I like the Mets, but I loved Rey Ordóñez.

Now if you have any baseball knowledge you’ll know Ordóñez was pretty awful at the plate. He was a .245 hitter with the Mets and was good for like one home run a season, but he was one of the best fielders in modern baseball history, winning three Gold Gloves and his 1999 season fielding was Dominik Hašek like when it came to otherworldly numbers.

Ordóñez was my favorite athlete, I dressed up as him for Halloween one year, just a Mets jersey with a No. 10 on the back, and it’s the reason I’m still stuck believing there’s a chance some day, in my lifetime, they’ll win a World Series¹.

My Tottenham fandom was something I discovered as an adult, watching the English Premier League every weekend and not having a team, but slowly finding myself drawn to the way Tottenham played. Eventually I went to England, in 2018, and saw a match between Spurs and Chelsea at Wembley Stadium, the new Spurs Stadium was still under construction, and I was hooked for life.

I had a favorite player, I really enjoyed watching Harry Kane, but once he left for Bayern Munich it didn’t impact my Spurs fandom. It was something where I was more connected with a team than a player, so while disappointing, it didn’t hurt that passion.

I also grew up as a huge fan of the New Jersey Devils, it’s how I got into hockey, and Martin Brodeur was my hero as a kid. But that fandom died as I grew up and worked in this industry, for me spending time around NHL players makes it harder to ever really root or care which team actually wins at the end.

In a way this, kind of connects back to the events of last night with the NBA Draft Lottery and the NHL playoff game tonight between the Winnipeg Jets and Dallas Stars.

Jamie Benn has been struggling this postseason, age and wear-and-tear seem to have caught up to him, again. He’s also been taking bad penalties and his usage has been diminished each game.

The Stars have made public claims that Benn will be back next season, Stars GM Jim Nill has been adamant about that, but it’s also become a fair time to question if, hockey-wise, that’s the best decision for the franchise when it comes to the management of assets.

In the offseason, is is more valuable to make sure Benn is a still star, again hockey wise, than it is to potentially bring back other pending UFAs like Matt Duchene or Mikael Granlund or Cody Ceci?

That’s an offseason question, and an important one to dive into. But I think it’s also important in this moment to talk about the non-hockey side, about the fandom and connection that Benn represents to this franchise.

Benn for many Stars fans is a version of Luka Dončić. He’s the player that either connected you to the franchise initially with some individual exploits, winning the Art Ross Trophy, for example, or served as the bridge to the past and the numbers hanging in the rafters.

Benn and Mike Modano overlapped for one season, similar to how Dončić and Dirk Nowitzki for one season, which was supposed to be a bridge that connected generations before Nico Harrison severed it.

The Stars, from a marketing and front-facing view, don’t want to see Benn with another team. He’s meant to retire as a Dallas Star someday, and the franchise still deals with the awkward aftershocks of Mike Modano playing that one season for the Detroit Red Wings.

Benn is such a part of the fabric of the Stars, that for many fans, even those that question the captaincy, he’s an inevitable fact of life.

Benn has also been in Dallas long enough to bridge the gap. Someone may have become a Stars fan because of Benn or connected to him through Modano, but now has their future connector, either through the team or and individual — maybe it’s Wyatt Johnston, the future captain.

The Mavericks, well Nico Harrison, never gave Dončić that chance, and while the Stars have been able to stack fandom and generations, the Mavericks are dealing with a full re-shuffle, re-making the movie with a new star and simply ignoring the old one that people connect with was quietly killed off off screen.

Again, this is one of those pieces where I’m not sure if it makes sense. But fandom is weird, it is short for fanatic, and these are the things I can’t help but noodle on this Tuesday afternoon.

Be fascinated to hear your thoughts. Also, I’ll have more actually well-thought thoughts tonight after Game 4.

1. I was born in 1989, the Mets last World Series came in 1986.