Like good PR, these storylines are filled with love

Sports and publicity chats are growing on the 🦋. Follow me there! Bluesky.

From the editor: Far be it for me not to suck up to web crawlers by glomming onto Valentine’s Day. After all, positive publicity can lead to love for your person, place or thing.

We now return to your regularly scheduled newsletter.

Love is in the air in L.A., and it has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day.

We all want to be loved, including Luka Dončić.

Well, he got it in bundles when the Los Angeles Lakers draped 20,000 t-shirts with his name and jersey number over seats for his first game after they acquired him from the Dallas Mavericks. During warmups, the team played Serbian music in the arena. Fans cheered his every move. If the Lakers looked at this as a publicity plotline, they’d call the trade a rousing success. But it is, of course, more than that.

Yes, Luka is loved after a volcanic trade that’s been compared to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he was traded from Milwaukee to the Lakers in 1975. The difference here is that the five-time all-star didn’t ask for it. He’s embraced it, though.

Luka showed L.A. love before he wore the Lakers’ purple and yellow with a $500,000 donation to support L.A. wildfire recovery. It reminded me of when Sean Payton and Drew Brees jumped in to help New Orleans recover after Hurricane Katrina. Even if he didn’t do it as a public relations gesture, the donation entrenched Luka as a love-at-first-sight member of the Lakers before he took a shot in their uniform.   

Speaking of love … 🏀🎙

I hope NBA broadcaster and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Hubie Brown felt the love from all corners of Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum and beyond earlier this week. Coaches, players, peers and fans celebrated the 91-year-old’s farewell after 35 years as a national TV and radio analyst. He and play-by-play announcer Mike Breen deftly called the action between two star-studded NBA teams for ABC/ESPN just like they’d done dozens of times before, but with well-spaced celebration sprinkled throughout.

Three things struck me as I sat next to Hubie from pregame through an extended postgame show:

1) Players many decades his junior came over to the broadcast table to personally thank the former coach for what he taught them from behind the mic and for his influence on the game.

2) After a life in basketball, Hubie’s focus was still on the game in front of him even as peers piped in live to wish him well.

3) From producer to director to graphics, camera operators and audio, the TV crew executed a well-paced production that could have veered schmaltzy in the hands of others. When I told one of them I teared up during parts of the show, one of them said he “cried like a baby” throughout.

Sports bind people

Some say, “It’s just sports” when something goes sideways in an upside-down world. It's also easy to get jaded by the business side. Sports are still about people, though. It’s why a lot of us eventually cheer for individuals more than teams.

For Sunday’s production crew, Breen included, Hubie’s last game was personal. One of the leaders in the TV truck said they wanted Hubie’s day to be as special for him as he was to them. Mission accomplished.

Love comes in all shapes, sizes, colors and heights. Never take it for granted.

©  2025, Gail Sideman, gpublicity

Work with me to earn your audience’s love with a strategically thoughtful public relations or publicity event. Shoot me a note: [email protected] and let’s unlock the secrets to their hearts.