The Dallas Mavericks’ unfathomable stroke of luck jumping 10 spots in the draft and the opportunity to select Cooper Flagg has been felt by the organization financially, according to team CEO Rick Welts. In an appearance this week at a Wall Street Journal event, the Dallas Morning News notes that the longtime front office executive stated the team saw $7-million in new future ticket sales in the days following the NBA Draft Lottery.
The more Welts has made public appearances, especially following the fortuitous lottery, the more he seems comfortable reflecting on what has been a pretty dark rough patch for the organization. To be clear, the rough patch was completely their own doing so no one should be shedding tears for any of the decision makers. But with the team receiving a historic get-out-of-jail-free card it’s worth reflecting on.
Also interesting to note how Welts has at least framed the fan response:
“It was kind of interesting,” he said. “It’s like, anybody who had been with us 10 years and more renewed; anyone who had been with us four years or less pretty much didn’t. They had kind of bought tickets for the Luka era. And then kind of the middle was a mix.”
In many ways that isn’t groundbreaking information, but if true, is an interesting way to mark fan engagement with the team; presumably from fans that were around for the loyalty of the Dirk years.
Welts also dove into other well-trod ground of his experience around the trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers. The CEO said he first learned of the deal from team governor Patrick Dumont 45 minutes before the deal was finalized. That it happened 32 days into the job for Welts, it had to be jarring.
One more bit that may never get clarified but jumped off the page at reading:
He called it “an incredibly rough ride.” At his previous stops of running NBA teams’ business operations, Phoenix and Golden State, the team almost immediately traded its most popular player. But he said fan attachment to those players paled with Dallas fans’ love for Doncic.
“We have since rethought a lot of procedures about how we’ll do things in Dallas going forward,” he said. “It was tough. It was tough on everybody.”
I don’t know what those “procedures” are that he’s referring to, but one has to assume it involves not giving free reign to Nico Harrison to do whatever his mamba mentality heart could dream up. And if that is the reevaluation the team is considering, one has to wonder why he’d still have the job if those sorts of procedures have to exist in the first place.