Dallas Mavericks and Carter Blood Care team up for massive blood drive

Hundreds of people turned out for a massive Dallas Mavericks blood donation drive on Saturday.

“My first time giving blood. My dad works for Children's Hospital, he's given blood lots of times before,” said donor Anna Taylor.

To honor their donation, the Mavericks were giving people who gave blood two free game tickets.

“My brothers love basketball, I thought that would be cool to be able to give that to them,” said Taylor.

Taylor says she thinks it’s even cooler that she can save three lives, by giving ten minutes of her time.

“It's kind of scary to give blood, but to know it can do something like that, it's worth it,” she said.

Linda Goelzer says the entire process, from checking in to donating, takes about an hour. It’s one of the reasons this drive is so important.

“It's not too often an ordinary person can do something that extraordinary.”

Between Christmas and New Year’s people are so busy, donations stop.

“Those are tight times, people are busy doing other things and there tends to be a lull in the number of people donating blood. That's one reason the Mavericks step forward and want to help us this time of year,” said Goelzer. “We are processing about 100 blood donors an hour, it's looking great.”

She says without the a readily available safe and sufficient supply of blood, the healthcare system would not be as robust.

“We are relying on volunteers to help us with this fundamental most important part of our healthcare system, the availability of blood.”

“My dad sees all the time how it helps people in the hospital. I think seeing it firsthand, really see how much of a need there is,” said Taylor

If you’d like to help. You can find a link to Carter Blood Care HERE