24. Mavs Man/Champ: Dallas Mavericks
The Dallas Mavericks’ mascots are a package deal, which explains their positioning on this list. Champ, the large personified horse in the Mavs jersey, is fine on his own, but his co-star Mavs Man is a completely different story.
Apparently, the Mavs brass looked at the Celtics mascot and thought “Oh boy, we need a mascot like that for our team!”. And thus began the process of fashioning a suit out of 20 cut-up and stitched-together basketballs, plucking some person off the street, handing him a headband, Foamposites and a trampoline, then congratulating themselves on finding such an awesome mascot.
Here’s the problem: Mavs Man is not a great mascot. On the contrary, handing someone a basketball skinsuit and a mask that looks like a much creepier version of All Might from My Hero Academia to do tricks during halftime is the height of laziness.
Imagine getting paid to come up with a cool mascot for the Mavs — despite them already having one — and going “Why don’t we put someone in a basketball costume and make him like a superhero?”. Mystifying stuff.
If they aimed to make Mavs Man into some sort of superhero-type figure, then their attempt landed more on the side of a 1960s Aquaman than Superman. I mean, look at this corny ad the team ran for him.
Cool, a superhero who stinks at his job. Who wouldn’t want to see him roaming the stands at Mavs games? Dallas already has a perfectly good mascot that is actually representative of the team. They don’t need this guy.