As he walks into Dallas for the first time since he went back on his word with the Mavericks and pulled a U-turn back to Clipper-land last summer, DeAndre Jordan should feel very lucky.
This isn’t 1980 and those aren’t the boisterous “Reunion Rowdies” who will come out to lambaste the Clippers’ big man. The Mavs are in an entirely different arena, and we’re in an entirely different age when it comes to how fans treat NBA players.
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Jordan shouldn’t just take our word for it. He can call NBA headquarters in New York and ask to speak to the executive vice president of basketball operations, Kiki VanDeWeghe, who was Public Enemy No. 1 in Dallas for years.
Wednesday night, Jordan is sure to get booed when he is introduced in American Airlines Center. But it won’t come close to what VanDeWeghe heard for the better part of his 13-year playing career. He was the first pick ever of the Mavs, refused to play for an expansion team and forced his way out of town, forever cementing himself as a marked man when he’d come in with the Nuggets, Blazers, Knicks and Clippers.
“The perception in Dallas was that I didn’t want to play there, but there were so many reasons, and it really came down to being a contract issue,” VanDeWeghe told Sporting News. “They never really stopped booing me. That building was so passionate and it turned out to be one of my favorite places to play in. But it got to the point where they booed me and it was just for fun. I had fans tell me that. But they always had great energy in that building and I ended up having some big games there.”
Jordan’s first game in Dallas will coincide on the same night with the most notable return of the season, as LaMarcus Aldridge goes back to Portland to play the Trail Blazers. He spent nine seasons in Portland, and in July, 2014, vowed to re-sign long term with the team. As he told the Oregonian, “I want to be the best Blazer. Ever.”
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But like Jordan, he changed his mind — and wound up signing last summer with the Spurs, back in his home state of Texas. He might hear boos, but we’re eons from the days of the Spurs’ notorious Baseline Bums or the vicious fans in the Pacers’ Market Square Arena, who often made life miserable for Patrick Ewing and Allen Iverson, to name only two favorite targets.
So this will not turn into Latrell Sprewell’s return to Oakland or his first game back in Madison Square Garden. In both sites, his non-stop, profane-laced rants at fans — and in New York, at Knicks owner James Dolan and his family — resulted in league investigations and stiff fines. It probably won’t even rise to the level of venom that Vince Carter encountered in his first game back in Toronto, and for many of his visits after that.
If Aldridge hears boos, it will be the fans who remember him saying that he wanted to go down in history as Portland’s finest player.
“I think the majority of fans will appreciate what he did here for nine years and how he was an All-Star four times and the face of the franchise,” Blazers coach Terry Stotts told SiriusXM NBA radio. “They’re going to remember how we were a playoff team five times with ‘L.A.’ and they’ll cheer for him. Now there might be a small segment of fans who will boo because he left here. They’re the ones who will feel jilted.”
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Jordan probably already has heard the worst of it, having been crushed on social media when he told the Mavs five days after he verbally agreed to play for them that he was returning to L.A. Back when VanDeWeghe played, fans didn't get to voice their displeasure with a player until they went to the game.
Down in Dallas, it’s virtually guaranteed that the only cheers for Jordan will come from the Clipper bench. But the crowd’s negative reaction will be tame compared to the hostility VanDeWeghe faced in his day. Since Ron Artest ran into the stands to fight the fans in the Palace of Auburn Hills more than 10 years ago, NBA arenas have become much more staid places, by design.
Before every game, home teams are required over the public-address system to issue a fan-conduct announcement. It’s basically a pre-emptive strike, warning fans that they can’t engage in “improper behavior, including fighting, the use of improper language and gestures.” Everyone is told up front that “spectators engaging in such unruly behavior are subject to ejection and arrest.”
Back when VanDeWeghe was playing, there were no such fan-conduct warnings. When Kiki went to Big D and the Reunion Rowdies were in full throat, it was game on.
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