When it comes to getting attention online, one former Barstool Sports employee knows how. On Saturday, he and his partner decided to make Los Angeles Lakers forward Luka Dončić their latest target.
But the journey to sitting courtside for the Lakers’ Western Conference first-round game against the Houston Rockets has been a long one.
Lakers’ Luka Dončić Becomes Target for Young Mantis
Young Mantis, whose real name is Mantis Taylor, and Tom Biddle showed up courtside in Dončić and LeBron James’ uniforms.
In a video clip from Crypto.com Arena, Taylor and Biddle are seen sitting along the Lakers’ sidelines chatting it up.
After going viral during the Lakers’ regular-season finale, influencer and former @barstoolsports employee @YoungMantis2 is once again courtside with a Luka Dončić lookalike: pic.twitter.com/iYyhxtAxSs
— Alex Kennedy (@AlexKennedyNBA) April 18, 2026
“After going viral during the Lakers’ regular-season finale, influencer and former @barstoolsports employee @YoungMantis2 is once again courtside with a Luka Dončić lookalike,” PFSN Deputy Editor Alex Kennedy posted on X.
Taylor and Biddle previously attended the Lakers’ game in Los Angeles earlier in April against the Utah Jazz, which was the Lakers’ regular-season finale. Taylor was laid off by Barstool Sports during the COVID-19 pandemic. After that happened, though, Taylor went off to start his own business.
Thanks to his and his team’s hard work, Taylor has watched his video numbers continue to grow. Pulling off stunts like showing up in Lakers uniforms goes viral, bringing plenty of new eyes to Taylor’s work. It’s not surprising to see Taylor find basketball as an outlet, since he’s a native of Indiana, a basketball-crazy state for both college and NBA play.
Besides Taylor, his business partners include Brandon Ames and Michael Cima. Taylor and Ames met in 2016 in a business class at IUPUI. Cima is a childhood friend of Taylor’s, so their friendship goes back a long way.
Young Mantis gets his videos out on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and X. More than 147,000 people follow Young Mantis’ account on Instagram. He and his team will take long-form videos and cut them down into clips, making them easy to go viral with their different stunts.
It isn’t clear whether Dončić had seen Young Mantis and Biddle before tipoff. If he does, though, they might have yet another viral moment to hit the video clip world. Young Mantis hopes that this latest stunt gets viewed by many people around the world.
