Mission Improbable: How the Dallas Mavericks Went OTA and OTT in Just 10 Weeks

The team launched a broadcasting operation from scratch leading into last season

Having landed the first pick in the NBA Draft and selecting one of the most heralded prospects in the league’s history Wednesday night, the Dallas Mavericks face a bright future — after a 2024-25 season that could easily be described as a tough transition year. During a year marked by dramatic turmoil, the team made a last-minute decision — in August, with the Oct. 24, 2024, season opener just 10 weeks away — to leave the troubled FanDuel Sports regional-sports-network portfolio and establish a new hybrid broadcast and direct-to-consumer streaming distribution model.

The turmoil may have hidden that decision. Under new ownership control, with Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, buying Mark Cuban’s majority stake in the team, the Mavs — NBA Finals runners-up just a season before — famously parted ways with their biggest star, sending Luca Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in a highly controversial midseason trade. Meanwhile, the team’s other star, Kyrie Irving, suffered a season-ending knee injury. There was also an unpopular bump in ticket prices that further irritated fans.

From left: MavsTV analyst Jeff “Skin” Wade, MavsTV Centercourt host Dana Larson, special guest and Mavs legend Avery Johnson, MavsTV analyst and Mavs legend Devin Harris (All photos: Vernon Bryant/Dallas Mavericks)

But then, in May, team and fan morale rekindled anew, with lucky lottery balls for the league’s No. 1 pick, assumed to be Duke phenom Cooper Flagg, going in Dallas’ direction. Indeed, Flagg has joined the Mavs’ roster, and the team has new broadcast/streaming distribution.

It’s part of what Dave Keeney, VP/executive producer, broadcast, Dallas Mavericks, calls a “mad-dash scramble” to reinvent the way the team locally presents its games and adjacent TV programming. Not only did a streaming-tech infrastructure need to be established, but an all-new graphical TV look had to be created from scratch.

And the bar was high: the new ownership group let Keeney and his team know that the Mavs were expected to hoist the best local broadcast in the NBA.

“It comes down to identifying ourselves,” notes Clay Armstrong, director, sports and entertainment, Mavericks, who has worked alongside Keeney for years. “When you watched the NBA on TNT, you knew you were watching Turner Broadcasting. We didn’t want a generic NBA package. Our mandate is to create the best network-quality insert package we can.”

And do it in just 70 days. No pressure.

MavsTV Centercourt host Dana Larson inverviews Mavs player Caleb Martin

“Our first call was to the league to see what they already had in place to support us,” Keeney says. “Facilities and trucks and personnel were our primary concerns.”

Happily, there was a “roadmap already in place,” Armstrong explains. The team had, in partnership with Tegna, already broadcast 10 of its regular-season games toward the end of the 2023-24 campaign.

Help From Partners

Under that agreement, Tegna would broadcast all non-nationally televised Mavs games on KFAA-TV Dallas–Fort Worth and other Tegna stations across Texas, reaching more than 10 million viewers. So major components of the broadcast partnership had already been established.

There were also working models to observe. Keeney and Armstrong sought advice from peers at the Phoenix Suns and New Orleans Pelicans, who had already embarked on similar transitions from RSN to hybrid local distribution.

MavsTV Centercourt host Dana Larson (left) and MavsTV analyst Brian Dameri

Short on time, the duo turned to trusted vendor partners. For new animations and other assorted graphical needs, they hired Los Angeles-based Two Fresh Creative and, to create the MavsTV DTC streaming app, turned to Plainview, NY’s Endeavor Streaming.

“The meetings to approve and change things were never-ending,” Armstrong recalls. “But we built a framework. We put the walls up.”

With their new local-distribution apparatus launched on schedule, Keeney and Armstrong can now focus on finer adjustments and improvements, honing MavsTV into ownership’s best-in-class vision.

Not that there’s too much time for contemplative goatee stroking. When SVG caught up with the pair on June 19, they were knee-deep in preparing an NBA Draft special for Draft Day on June 25.