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LAS VEGAS — Tuesday night, right after Sandro Mamukelashvili drove baseline and threw down a ferocious one-handed slam, a fan 10 rows up opposite the Los Angeles Lakers’ bench jumped out of his seat and flexed like he had dunked the ball through the rim.
Sandro Mamukelashvili‘s biggest fan, Flavor Flav! ⏰ https://t.co/DBYFPUtmKZ pic.twitter.com/WNomTAtrxz
— NBA (@NBA) October 14, 2026
When William Drayton Jr. — better known as Flavor Flav — celebrates your best play like that, people tend to notice. The Public Enemy hype man focused on bringing that same energy to the Lakers’ new forward.
“I just lost my mind,” Flavor Flav told The Athletic. “I just lost my mind when I was watching, when I seen that dunk. And I punched myself in the face because I didn’t film it.”
Because when Mamukelashvili succeeds, Flav wants to make sure to capture it. The two have built a close friendship since a chance meeting in Las Vegas in 2022, when they ended up at the same table during a dinner and connected.
“He still has my summer-league jersey,” Mamukelashvili said.
Since then, Flavor Flav and Mamukelashvili have communicated, sometimes more than once a week, either by text or on long FaceTime calls. On March 19, 2025, when Mamukelashvili caught fire and scored 34 points in 19 minutes for the Toronto Raptors, the most ever for a player with less than 20 minutes of court time, Flavor Flav crashed the postgame interview.
Fittingly, the rapper was wearing a shirt that said “Lucky Charm.”
“He was on fire that night; he hit like 34 points in under 20 minutes,” Flavor Flav said, remembering proudly from his seat Tuesday night. “And he said it was all because I was there. So, I was like a good luck charm to him. His father said the same thing. His father said he only did that all because you were there.”
Mamukelashvili acknowledged it’s a little wild how a Georgian national and a hip-hop legend connected. Maybe, he said, Flav wants to share the lessons he’s learned from his life — the successes and the failures. Maybe Flav is drawn to Mamukelashvili because he had to scratch his way into a stable NBA life. Or maybe, the two just clicked, a pair of genuine people who saw value in one another.
“I’m so, so proud of him cause he came a long way, you know what I’m saying?” Flav said. “And I really feel right now that the best thing that could have really ever happened to him was being picked up by the Lakers.”
In four preseason appearances for the Lakers, Mamukelashvili is averaging 13 points on 57.1 percent shooting from the field and 58.8 percent shooting on 3s. He’s also shown why the Lakers rewarded him this summer with a four-year, $52 million deal by looking like a dynamic offensive playmaker who can be a secondary distributor in transition and against defensive closeouts.
“We’ll get creative with him,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said earlier in training camp. “It’ll be fun.”
After Mamukelashvili’s highlight Tuesday, Flavor Flav made sure to have his phone handy for the next possession, just in case there was another play he couldn’t afford to miss. He’s been doing this for years, sitting courtside in Boston, filming plays and cheering his friend so loudly that Mamukelashvili could hear him over the Celtics crowd.
“Now he’s in Los Angeles, and he gets a chance now to shine. He gets a chance to show his personality. He gets a chance to show everybody what he can really, really do,” Flav said. “… He’s a very warm-hearted person, kind man. He loves people. He’s genuine. He’s honest, you know, and he’s good. He’s real good people, man, you know, real good people.”
The feeling is mutual; the Lakers’ newest forward is happy to make a big play in front of one of his oldest NBA fans.
“The energy he has and like … you know, he saw me at my lowest. Like, I knew him when I got cut, and I knew him when I was the 15th man,” Mamukelashvili told The Athletic. “… He saw me in a lot of different stages, so I think for him like understanding like I never gave up. And, you know … I used to always tell him like, ‘I got this man. I’ll find my way.’”
Tuesday, as Mamukelashvili made the game’s most exciting play, Flavor Flav was just mad he wasn’t quick enough to record it.
