And-Ones: Mavs, All-Star Draft, China, Ball

The Mavericks announced in a press release that they’ve partnered with Chime Banking for a jersey sponsorship deal. While the exact terms of the agreement aren’t known, Mark Medina of USA Today reports that it’s worth “just under eight figures.”

Dallas previously had a jersey sponsorship deal with the company 5miles, but terminated it last year. Following the end of that partnership, the Mavericks had been the only team without a uniform patch in place, as our tracker shows.

Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

  • As it did a year ago, the NBA’s All-Star draft will take place on the day of the trade deadline, with the league announcing in a press release that the event will air on TNT at 7:00pm ET on February 6, four hours after the deadline. The top vote-getter in each conference will be an All-Star captain, and those two captains will select their teams from the pools of All-Star starters and reserves.
  • Nets owner Joseph Tsai recently said in an interview with YES Network that the NBA is working to get its relationship with China back on track (hat tip to NetsDaily). “The key thing is we need be broadcast on TV back in China,” Tsai said. “There’s talk NBA ratings are kind of down for various reasons. But we don’t want to see ratings go down globally. We need the NBA games to be back on TV in China.” Tsai faced some criticism in the fall when he wrote a Facebook post essentially defending China’s reaction to Daryl Morey‘s infamous tweet supporting Hong Kong protestors.
  • Ethan Strauss of The Athletic takes a look at LaMelo Ball‘s National Basketball League film as he attempts to assess the youngster’s value, ultimately concluding that he wouldn’t feel comfortable making Ball a top-five pick in the 2020 NBA draft.
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