A tweet claiming that Luka Doncic’s #77 Dallas Mavericks jerseys have been banned from the American Airlines Center gained a lot of traction last night. “BREAKING: The Mavericks organization has announced they will ban fans from wearing Luka Doncic jerseys as a way to move forward from him,” the post read.
Advertisement
Such a report would have seemed outlandish even a month ago. But the way Mavs fans have reacted to Doncic’s shocking trade to the Lakers, a lot of fans were inclined to believe that this could indeed be true.
Former NFL wide receiver, Dez Bryant, was among those stunned by the ‘news’. He shared the tweet on his X account with the caption, “This better be a lie.”
Well, it was a lie. Bryant was “centel’d” as NBA fans like to call it.
The parody X account NBACentel often posts fake reports on social media, which are tailor-made to prank fans on the Internet. The account posts some wild reports whenever something dramatic is going on in the NBA. These posts seem believable to many fans because they tend to expect some extraordinary things to happen during said dramatic scenarios.
Dez Bryant got caught by centel and deleted his post pic.twitter.com/pTudTuRZJi
— plug (@gmoney_lmt) February 22, 2025
For instance, the Luka Doncic trade provided the perfect situation for Centel to dupe fans. The Mavs organization have been bad-mouthing their recently traded franchise superstar to justify their shocking trade decision. This went hand-in-hand with Dallas fans filling up the front of the arena with Luka jerseys and even booing the management during games.
So the organization cracking down on Doncic jerseys doesn’t seem that much of a stretch, especially since most fans now are reluctant to dismiss any outlandish news coming out of Dallas after the Luka-AD trade.
NBACentel also implements certain techniques to sell their fake story to oblivious fans. Their logo and format of reporting closely resemble NBACentral, which is a legitimate news site.
They also tagged an account named, Chris B Hayne, as the source of the report. This tagged name is awfully close to the name of NBA insider, Chris B. Haynes, who is well-known for dropping some big reports.
In any case, Bryant fell for the trap and had to delete his tweet later on. However, Mavs fans will be glad that they can still wear Luka jerseys inside the AAC to commemorate the five-time All-Star’s legacy in Dallas.
