Jalen Brunson had to wear an embarrassing jersey after losing a bet to Luka Doncic.
Before the Dallas Mavericks‘ preseason game against the Minnesota Timberwolves Thursday night, Jalen Brunson showed up to the American Airlines Center donning a Dallas Cowboys jersey.
Normal enough for an NBA player living in Dallas, right? Wrong.
As the cameraman filming Brunson’s entrance seemed well-aware of, there was something different about this Cowboys jersey and the circumstances that led to him wearing it. Even beneath his mask, Brunson was clearly smiling in a flustered sort of way.
It was only until his back came into view that the joke revealed itself: In big, broad letters, the jersey read “Luka’s son,” and apparently this was Brunson’s penance for losing a bet with Mavericks star Luka Doncic.
So what bet did Jalen Brunson lose to Luka Doncic?
Doing a bit of digging on Twitter, we can see that Brunson asked the good people online which Cowboys jersey he should ask for from Doncic after losing their bet. Brunson’s first thought was Terrell Owens, but Luka had other plans in mind:
The question is, what bet did they make that forced Brunson to wear this custom “Luka’s son” Cowboys jersey? Going back a bit further to Nov. 28, it appears something happened in the world of sports that Doncic found amusing, which likely means it was connected to their bet as he couldn’t help but rub it in:
“What just happened???” Brunson tweeted at 10:10 p.m. ET that Saturday night. Doncic responded with “Time to sleep” four minutes later.
There are two possibilities: One is that Brunson’s college basketball team, the Villanova Wildcats, lost in overtime to Virginia Tech that night, and Brunson was reacting to his old team suffering its first loss of the season.
The other, given what the viral event held on Nov. 28, is that Luka’s “Time to sleep” comment was referring to Jake Paul knocking Nate Robinson out cold in their boxing match that evening. But no matter which event lost Brunson the bet, we’re sure glad we got to see the end result.