Luka Doncic fan launches billboard campaign for Mavericks' management: "Dallas deserves better"
DALLAS — Jacob Posner said he is passionate about watching NBA games. He is a Los Angeles native, but the 20-year-old game said his connection to the game is Luka Doncic.
"What makes him great is his basketball IQ," Posner said. "It's the way he commands the game. The way he sees the game."
The Dartmouth College student spoke to CBS News Texas from his hotel room in Sicily, Italy, where he's learning Italian abroad in Rome.
The college student is so upset by Doncic's trade to the Los Angeles Lakers that he wants to let the owners and the management of the Dallas Mavericks know "Dallas Deserves Better."
Posner, a Pacific Palisades Charter High School graduate, said chatter on the platform Reddit sparked the idea.
"It inspired me to create this GoFundMe page to put up billboards in the Dallas area around the American Airlines Center that are in support of Luka and really anti-the regime and what they have done in trading him away," Posner said.
Posner is crowdsourcing money for billboards: Posters, digital, and bulletins. With $82,600, he said, he would blanket the area in and around the American Airlines Center for Mavericks management.
"I recognize that may be a little bit unrealistic," he said. "But at the very least, if we get to a couple thousand, that should be able to buy at least one, and the goal is to get as many as possible."
Fans who feel betrayed agree with the California native.
"I feel like we raised him. He raised us almost in a way, and so I'm personally devastated," Kate Cartwright said.
Her friend Madi McCracken isn't over the trade either.
"I love the Mavs. I love Luka. I don't know what to do with myself and my fandom now," McCracken said.
The two believe the Doncic signs would tell Mavs' management fans need a voice, too.
Chris Besello is happy about the trade because he's a Los Angeles Lakers fan. He believes the Lakers got the best part of the trade in the long run. Posner's signs, he is not sure, will be effective.
"It's a business for them at the end of the day. So if their mindset is that they want to win championships right now, then that's what they're going to go with," he said.