During the NBA playoffs, people were beginning to notice that the uniforms worn by the Dallas Mavericks seem not to say “Mavs,” rendered in all caps, but “Maus,” the title of Art Spiegelman’s 1986 bestseller, a graphic novel about the Holocaust.

Louis Keene, a staff reporter at The Forward, covering religion, sports and the West Coast, decided to call Art Spiegelman to see what he thought of the Mavs/Maus mixup. “That’s funny,” Spiegelman said. “I haven’t seen it, but I have no thoughts about sports at all. I couldn’t recite back to you what sports you were talking about.

As an afterthought, he asked, “Is there another team with cats playing?”