Cato: Fandom is community, and DLLS will be that for Mavericks fans

To be a fan is to find community.

I’ve found it my entire sports-watching lifetime: an early web 2.0-style message board for the Dallas Mavericks; the internal email chains and external comment sections for the SB Nation blog I once ran; a subreddit I frequent for one soccer team that I support; a Discord for another that’s led to real-life friends. I’ve started group chats and text threads, had countless conversations with strangers, arranged my schedule around games, listened parasocially to podcasts, spent far too many hours on Twitter. All because of the sports I’ve followed.

I’m sure you’re like that, too. You can’t marvel at astonishing athletic feats you witness without insisting others do, too. You can’t rage at incomprehensible defeats without seeking out others feeling that same pain. You don’t celebrate joyous sports highs alone but with those who understand. Because fandom is an infinite resource, of course we feel compelled to share and spread it further.

As we launch today, I believe DLLS will be a community to do just that. A place where you can savor and marvel and rage. Where your irrational emotions need no explanation.

I’m joining as the lead Dallas Mavericks writer and analyst, and with me comes the immeasurable NBA knowledge of Marc Stein, the brilliant basketball brain of Bobby Karalla, and the ever-steady voice of Kevin Gray Jr. It’s an unbelievably talented squad I’m so psyched to work with. Here’s what you can expect from us:

• Live one-hour video shows five times each week from us, including pregame and postgame shows, from the DLLS studio or wherever else we might be.
• Written beat coverage from myself, similar to my work over the past six years, but with a touch more internet fun mixed into the feature articles and on-the-ground reporting from home games and road trips (and, if I can talk anyone into it, maybe even Slovenia again?)
• Additional written contributions from Bobby and Kevin’s own unique perspectives
• A community for yourself and your fellow fans with countless ways to engage with ourselves and those around you

That’s the quick-and-dirty summary. There will be plenty more. But this place couldn’t happen without that shared compulsion to find community. Even in the professional context that I’ve come to view basketball, that remains a feeling that I know intimately. I’ve always been searching for it, and for more of it, as long as I’ve watched sports. I’ll do my part to help y’all create it at this place this coming season.

Because I hope, and believe, you can find it here.