The Luka Doncic trade from the Mavs to the Lakers wasn’t just one of the biggest stories this NBA season, but also opened a Pandora’s Box of misinformation. Numerous social media accounts have propagated fake stories surrounding the Slovenian superstar’s exit from Dallas and move to La La Land. While many have sniffed out the lies, some have fallen for it, including professional analysts and players. Kevin Garnett falls into that category.
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The popular account NBA Centel has been on a generational run of duping people into believing what they report is real. NBA Centel is a parody of NBA Central, which constantly shares accurate stories in the NBA universe.
One story that Centel put out was that the Mavericks organization had banned fans from wearing Luka’s jersey during home games as a way of “moving on from the star.” The faux tweet even fooled ESPN Brazil commentators, who reported it as fact live on the air.
Garnett fell victim to Centel a mere few weeks ago, and now the 15-time All Star has bit the dust yet again. Centel themselves shared a clip of Garnett on the latest edition of his KG Certified podcast. Pierce and KG were going off about the “dark cloud” that has hovered over the Mavs season when Garnett spoke about what he thought was a real story.
“Man I saw that you can’t wear the 77 jersey. You got to go upstairs and get it exchanged,” said a confident Garnett. Centel took full advantage of its latest victim. “KG got CENTELED by the Luka jersey ban,” the account wrote, and added a laughing emoji to further cement its victory.
KG got CENTELED by the Luka jersey ban. https://t.co/QQ3yDtUBDL pic.twitter.com/sJioIXBF3n
— NBACentel (@TheNBACentel) March 7, 2025
To be fair to KG, Centel does have a gift for laying out their “reports” extremely similar to how professional media members lay them out. Follow any reliable sports insider and their “BREAKING” would be a carbon copy of what Centel did. While the Luka jersey story is entirely false, that doesn’t mean that the Mavs trying to move on from their former franchise player is untrue in any way.
The Mavericks just want the nightmare to end
It must be hard to be a Mavericks fan, especially this season. Between Luka getting traded away to the team’s other star, Kyrie Irving, suffering a season-ending injury, the phrase “when it rains it pours” has never seemed truer. That being said, the Mavs organization is not totally innocent of Luka erasure.
Luka was purposefully edited out of the Mavericks hype video package that featured Dallas rapper Dorrough. Or at least that is what fans thought. Mavs logos were placed over former players who were no longer on the team, one that didn’t feature the 25-year-old superstar at all.
Regardless, the video garnered a ton of backlash from fans online, forcing it to be pulled down altogether.
The Dallas Mavericks edited Luka out of their hype video pic.twitter.com/KfM2bswAMb
— SportsMillions (@Sports_Millions) February 22, 2025
Dorrough himself had to address the controversy, and put out a statement about the situation.
“As a lifelong Mavericks fan and someone who takes great pride in the game of basketball, I would never be part of anything intended to remove, censor, or disrespect Luka Doncic,” the rapper stated.
Whether the video was done with viciousness, or whether it was the Mavs just removing a player that no longer plays for them, one thing is certain: the Lakers are on an eight-game winning streak, and the Mavs are only a few games out from missing the playoffs entirely.
