A Dallas therapist reflects on the city's collective grief over the Luka Doncic trade, comparing the intense emotions to the aftermath of a sudden breakup. Drawing parallels to her clients' experiences with unexpected relationship endings, she explores the ways in which sports fandom can mirror intense emotional attachments and the difficulty of letting go.
Matt Zerai holds a sign with “MFFL (Mans Fan for Life)” crossed out as he stands near a coffin at American Airlines Center after the Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025, in Dallas.It happens pretty frequently that one of my clients —someone in a happy, stable relationship — suddenly dreams about an old boyfriend or girlfriend. The dreams are seemingly out of nowhere. They occur in a cluster.
And often they’re doing something innocuous like eating ice cream. “Why?” my clients ask, with a certain amount of distress. I’m their therapist, not their dream interpreter, but I suggest that big emotions are often sticky. Hormones flood the brain during life’s pivotal moments, and those feelings hang around a really long time, ready to be plucked from obscurity under random circumstances. (It’s a similar phenomenon as my lawyer friends dreaming they overslept for the bar exam decades later.)I’ve thought about this since last Saturday night when I woke up to my phone going off. It’s been a bad news week. Protests, plane crashes, fires. My first thought: Oh, what fresh hell hath befallen us now?Borrowing from the Kübler-Ross Stages of Grief, I see Dallas cycling through all of it. I see depression in front of the American Airlines Center, young men in suits scream-crying “Why?!!!” over a coffin they’ve outfitted just for this occasion. (Who just has a coffin on hand?)Thou shalt not desecrate the Big German! ) I see bargaining and denial in the conspiracies that sprouted: Project 2025? An underground deal to move the Mavs to Vegas?God, this looks like a hostage video. It’s not until a later interview that Harrison says the thing that had me thinking of my clients: “When we win, I believe the frustration will go away.”So far this week, Luka has been brought up in some capacity in most of my sessions. If you’re not a sports fan, the reaction to a trade sounds stupid and overdramatic. But sports are a fantasyland, and as one of my clients said today, “It’s fun drama. I think we care so much about Luka because he’s easier to feel and grieve. But a plane crash…”. They unite when politics divide. They distract when the world is burning. My friend Joe, sober two decades now, admits that theMost sports fans, me included, know when not to get too attached. Maybe we know it’s a short contract. Maybe it’s a player’s attitude or just a gut feeling. In romantic parlance, we know whether someone’s good to date or good to marry. Dallas thought we were married to Luka. Heck, we never even had a fight. Sure, there were tiffs! Sure, there was body shaming! But we were happy! WeNow, as the sun sets on our first Luka-less week and I refill the office Kleenex box, I, too, am in a sad hole on Instagram. Luka getting off the jet in Los Angeles. Luka making the LA sign with his fingers. Luka’s jersey.In the therapy world, these “nobody saw it coming” breakups are the hardest to process. They destabilize you. They make you rethink your relationship to everyone. They make you question your future relationships. They make you grab that coffin (Nico. We know we’ll move on. That’s not the point. The point is Luka was sticky. Luka got into our hearts. Sure, we’ll find love again. (We may even buy a goldendoodle and a house in Lake Highlands.) Just don’t be surprised if a few years from now, maybe even after you hoist the O’Brien Championship Trophy over your head, you wake up wondering why Luka is still in your dreams. Because no matter how happy you end up, you never forget the one that got away.
Psychology Relationships DALLAS MAVERICKS LUKA DONCIC TRADES SPORTS FANS GRIEF THERAPY BREAKUPS EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT
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