Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> rocked the fanbase, as well as the sports world in general.<\/p>\nInstead of gathering a large sampling of fans\u2019 stories, Selvarajan chose to anchor the film on Welch\u2019s experience. She explains how she became a Mavericks fan, what the team means to her, and how the trade made her feel. The singular focus on Welch was a bold choice, and one that pays off. She\u2019s the perfect voice for Mavs fans who invested so much into the team, only to have a homegrown superstar shipped out in the dark of the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing I really like about Dallas sports is it brings people together from all walks of life,\u201d Welch says at one point in the film. Selvarajan does a great job of illustrating how the Luka trade brought Mavericks fans together, but this time in grief and anger, instead of shared joy over basketball.<\/p>\n
In less than ten minutes, MFFL captures the mood of an entire fanbase in the aftermath of one of the most lopsided and inexplicable trades in sports history. Selvarajan perfectly weaves together the incredulity of the national media with the shock and rage of Dallas fans in a narrative that will be important for fans of the NBA in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to capture this period of Mavs fandom in a jar,\u201d Selvarajan recently told me over the phone. \u201cI just wanted to capture it so we never forgot this confusion, this sadness, this anger.\u201d<\/p>\n
MFFL does that and more, with scenes from the protests, clips from NBA podcasts, and the superb testimony of Welch. If someone asks you what it was like in Dallas in the days and weeks after Luka Doncic was traded, you can simply point them to Selvarajan\u2019s film. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey came between us and our guy, and that was wrong.\u201d That\u2019s how Dallas Mavericks fan Debra Welch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,26128,686,149,4057,509,17324,1642,28,508,166,6849,174,29217,175,6,29218,409],"class_list":{"0":"post-153660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-cliff","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-mavericks","12":"tag-dallasmavericks","13":"tag-doncic","14":"tag-festival","15":"tag-film","16":"tag-front-page","17":"tag-luka","18":"tag-mavericks","19":"tag-mavericks-history","20":"tag-mavs","21":"tag-mffl","22":"tag-moneyball","23":"tag-nba","24":"tag-oak","25":"tag-trade"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114812804538001669","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}