NBA’s Dallas Mavericks get Overwatch-style hype vid

After years of asking, the person who does in-game media for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks finally got their wish: to do a crowd hype video themed like Overwatch highlights.

Redditor thankstowelie posted this to the game’s subreddit yesterday to rave reviews. This introduced the team during their 111-102 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday night. And why not? Fellow arena tenants the Dallas Stars are known to use Punch-Out!! and Guile’s themes to score hockey fights, after all.

For those not familiar with Overwatch or NBA canon, here’s who’s who:

• Future hall-of-famer Dirk Nowitzki is Soldier: 76.
• DeAndre Jordan (who, appropriately, threw down one of the most savage right-handed dunks of all time, and he’s left-handed) is Lucio.
• Harrison Barnes is McCree.
• Dennis Smith is Pharah.
• Wesley Matthews is Hanzo.
• Luka Doncic is Junkrat. Doncic plays a lot of Overwatch in fact, and mains Hanzo, but Matthews is already Hanzo because “he does that bow and arrow thing after every shot!” thankstowelie said. Doncic’s lack of enthusiasm is palpable.

It’s still a very swell intro. I always wanted to see someone set one of these to the XCOM: Enemy Unknown opening. But Overwatch is probably a lot more current and recognizable and still does the trick for firing up the crowd, which is thankstowelie’s job after all.