{"id":151884,"date":"2025-09-12T16:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T16:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/151884\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T16:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T16:59:11","slug":"lara-beth-seagers-path-to-becoming-luka-doncics-behind-the-scenes-brand-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/151884\/","title":{"rendered":"Lara Beth Seager’s path to becoming Luka Don\u010di\u0107’s behind-the-scenes brand manager"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dallas Mavericks didn\u2019t tell Luka Doncic, she did.<\/p>\n

Somebody had to call him, middle of the night or not, and it was Lara Beth Seager \u2014 Doncic\u2019s chief brand officer, business manager, big sister and shoulder to lean on \u2014 who let him know he was traded to the Lakers<\/a> late, late on a February Saturday night.<\/p>\n

He thought it was a joke until it wasn\u2019t, which is when he threw and shattered his iPhone. Since then, it\u2019s been Seager who\u2019s helped him pick up the pieces.<\/p>\n

Now what you have is lean and toned Doncic, purposely on the cover of Men\u2019s Health (thanks to Seager) and purposely on a high-protein diet (thanks again to Seager). \u201cI don\u2019t think Luka can do anything without Lara Beth,\u201d said Charlotte Jones, Jerry Jones\u2019 daughter who has hired Seager herself and witnessed the Doncic-Seager dynamic. <\/p>\n

Seager, 47, has a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that is a who\u2019s who of iconic Dallas athletes. She first did foundation work for the Stars\u2019 Mike Modano before moving to the Mavs\u2019 Dirk Nowitzki, before going all in with Doncic. They\u2019re like family to her, and she should know: She has 36 brothers and sisters.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s no typo. When Seager was 2, growing up in Fort Atkinson, Wis., her parents began adopting children annually out of the goodness of their hearts. First, a new sister; then a new brother; then she said, \u201cIt was two at a time, five at a time, four at a time \u2014 so they could keep brothers and sisters together.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time she graduated from high school, Seager and her one birth sister had 21 siblings living in their 12-bedroom, six-bathroom house. Girls lived on the top floor, her parents on the middle floor and boys in the basement. Their family car was an airport shuttle bus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had roll call,\u201d said Seager, whose father is a mechanical engineer and mother a therapist. \u201cWhen we would get in [the bus] from dinner or sporting events, my mom would go through the list of names. We\u2019d have friends stashed under seats.\u201d<\/p>\n

She eventually became one of 37, and if it taught her anything, she said, it was that \u201cthe greatest joy in life comes from helping someone else reach their dreams and giving everything you had to get them there. That\u2019s what my parents did. They gave my brothers and sisters a forever home. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt 1,000% shaped me; it\u2019s the foundation of everything I am and everything I do. I\u2019ve grown and based my career on my upbringing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NA\"Luka Don\u010di\u0107’s brand manager Lara Beth Seager Lara Beth Seager <\/p>\n

Growing up in a crowd prepared her for life\u2019s rat race. She fell into an Orlando-based job touring with NSYNC, and, when the boy band broke up, she parlayed that into a job alongside Modano (through NSYNC\u2019s management group). She moved to Dallas, building her Lara Beth Entertainment Consultancy business and Modano\u2019s foundation. When launching a Heroes Celebrity Baseball charity event, she met Nowitzki, whose swing for the fences was asking the retired Modano if he could hire Seager for his own foundation.<\/p>\n

Seager was becoming a go-to event planner in Dallas. The Cowboys\/Jones family hired her to organize parties at Super Bowl XLV in 2011, at Jerry\u2019s Hall of Fame induction and on the Jones yacht. During that Dallas Super Bowl, Charlotte Jones said, \u201cWe had a 100-year ice storm and couldn\u2019t step outside, couldn\u2019t get tickets to anybody. An extreme crisis. She never cracked. She was, \u2018We\u2019re gonna figure out another way to get there if we have to walk in snow shoes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Dallas teams wanted in. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban had her choreograph the celebration of Nowitzki\u2019s final home game in 2019 \u2014 which so happened to be Doncic\u2019s rookie year.<\/p>\n

With Nowitzki\u2019s blessing, Seager began managing Doncic in February 2020. He\u2019d sleep on Seager and her husband\u2019s couch. She\u2019d paint the walls of his apartment. She\u2019d hunt down personal chefs for him, and when no one was available, Jones said Seager would cook dinner herself.<\/p>\n

Said Seager: \u201cYou can\u2019t run someone\u2019s business if you don\u2019t understand who they are as a person. I spent probably a year and a half watching, learning, before I really started building his brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said Doncic: \u201cLara Beth has been amazing to me. She helped me with many, many things in my life. My business has grown so much because of her help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Said Jones: \u201cA powerhouse as a manager. A lot of people would love to be represented by her. It\u2019s going to be interesting to see if Luka will share.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NA\"Luka Don\u010di\u0107 with Lara Beth Seager, Lakers GM Rob Pelinka, and agent Bill Duffy after signing his Lakers extension. Lara Beth Seager <\/p>\n

The night of the Lakers trade, on Feb. 1, she turned psychologist. After the initial shock \u2014 and iPhone toss \u2014 Seager told him, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to feel sorry for ourselves,\u201d and \u201cYou always dreamed of playing basketball at the highest level, and now you\u2019re under the brightest lights with the Lakers,\u201d and \u201cYou will be the first European player to be the face of a franchise in a No. 1 large market.\u201d<\/p>\n

They flew to L.A. the next morning to meet Lakers brass. They talked of the possibilities<\/a>; of a new sports marketing platform she\u2019d co-founded with him called 77X, Doncic\u2019s personal brand studio that will serve as a fan community. Afterward, she assumed they\u2019d get some rest, but Doncic said no, he had a surprise. \u201cIt\u2019s your birthday, I haven\u2019t forgotten,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He took her and a group out to dinner, making time for his manager on one of the more overwhelming days of his life. Something a 37th sibling would do.<\/p>\n

THREE QUESTIONS WITH LARA BETH SEAGER \u2026<\/p>\n

How did you fall in love with sports? \u201cMy dad\u2019s a die-hard Wisconsin Badger, and we had to take turns going to football games because my dad only had four season tickets. But none of my sisters ever wanted to go, and my brothers had practices or games on Saturdays. So I was always the one who volunteered, and that was my time with my father, and that\u2019s where my love of sport started.\u201d <\/p>\n

What was your learning curve with Luka? \u201cHe came from the Real Madrid culture, where you cannot give an interview until you\u2019re 18. So he was private, and I had to get to know what he liked and didn\u2019t like, what he does in his spare time, what his hobbies are, what his dreams are. That helps build someone\u2019s brand and legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

How did you think he was going to handle the trade? \u201cLuka is super strong. Luka is resilient. He left home [Slovenia] at 13 years old and went to Spain to play basketball and didn\u2019t speak a lick of Spanish. This kid is a survivor and a fighter, and I knew he was going to be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NA\"Lara Beth Seager is the brand manager behind Luka Don\u010di\u0107’s personal revival. Lara Beth Seager <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dallas Mavericks didn\u2019t tell Luka Doncic, she did. Somebody had to call him, middle of the night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,8837,99,23573],"class_list":["post-151884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-print","tag-sports","tag-upfront"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}