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      Dallas Mavericks Stun the Phoenix Suns in Game 7 Upset

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      The Suns had the best record in the N.B.A. in the regular season, and went to the finals last year. This time, they couldn’t make it out of the second round of the playoffs.A Game 7 in the N.B.A. playoffs is supposed to be the most thrilling, intense type of game, where the high stakes bring out the best in both teams.It doesn’t always work out that way, but rarely does a team crumble as thoroughly as the Phoenix Suns did Sunday night.By halftime, Suns fans sat slumped in their seats, the Suns’ players wore blank looks as they sat on the bench and the Mavericks’ Luka Doncic could not stop laughing.Phoenix’s catastrophe was well underway.The top-seeded Suns lost to No. 4-seeded Dallas, 123-90, in Game 7 of their Western Conference semifinals series in Phoenix. Dallas, which led by 46 points in the second half and never trailed, will face Golden State on Wednesday in San Francisco in Game 1 of the conference finals.The Suns dominated the regular season and set a franchise record for wins with one goal in mind: return to the N.B.A. finals for a second straight year — and win the championship this time.Now, they won’t even get a chance to try.“I know they didn’t want to play that way,” Suns Coach Monty Williams said. “We basically played the worst game of the season tonight. That group has a lot of character and integrity. I know how bad they wanted it.”He added: “Dallas played their tails off from start to finish.”Doncic scored 35 points with 10 rebounds and 4 assists, without playing at all in the fourth quarter. Spencer Dinwiddie added 30 points for Dallas, and Jalen Brunson scored 24.“I can’t get this smile off my face right now,” Doncic said after the game. “I’m just really happy.”Game 7 between the Suns and Mavericks was the first time the road team won in the series. The Suns had beaten the Mavericks by an average of 19 points per game in the previous three games in Phoenix.On Sunday, though, being at home offered no boost for Phoenix.By halftime, the Suns had eight assists and seven turnovers. Their entire team had scored 27 points — just as many as Doncic had during the first half. Devin Booker and Chris Paul, their offensive leaders, had made none of their 11 field goal attempts.“Some of the pressure was probably on them early because they missed some shots that they normally make,” Mavericks Coach Jason Kidd said.Booker finished with 11 points and Paul with 10. Center Deandre Ayton played only 17 minutes 27 seconds, and scored 5 points.For Phoenix, the loss ended a season that began ominously when the N.B.A. started investigating Robert Sarver, the owner of the Suns and the W.N.B.A.’s Phoenix Mercury, after current and former employees accused him of racist, sexist and otherwise inappropriate behavior. The results of the investigation have not been announced.On the court, it was the Suns’ most promising season in 12 years. They were nearly unbeatable, going 64-18 during the regular season.They lost three out of their first four games, but then went on an 18-game winning streak that included two wins over the Mavericks and one over Golden State. The Suns set the franchise single-season wins record with their 63rd victory, which came against the Los Angeles Lakers in a game that knocked the Lakers out of playoff contention.The Suns were led by two All-Star guards: the 25-year-old Booker, and the 37-year-old Paul, in his 17th N.B.A. season. Last season marked the first time Paul had ever been to the N.B.A. finals.Suns wing Mikal Bridges finished second in voting for the league’s Defensive Player of the Year Award, and Williams was named coach of the year.Dallas’ Luka Doncic, left, scored 27 points in the first half. So did the Phoenix Suns.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAs the playoffs approached, Williams worked to balance his desire to rest players, heading into what they expected to be a long playoff run, with a need to keep them playing for momentum heading into the postseason.They lost four of their last six games, but still entered the playoffs as heavy favorites as the No. 1 seed.Right from the start their path was rockier than expected. They took six games to beat the New Orleans Pelicans, who had sneaked into the playoffs through the play-in tournament after having the ninth-best record in the West.The Suns have the most wins and finals appearances of any N.B.A. team that has not won a championship.Last season, Phoenix made its third trip to the finals and fell to the Milwaukee Bucks, losing four consecutive times after winning the first two games.The Bucks also were eliminated from the playoffs on Sunday, losing a Game 7 to the Boston Celtics, who will face the top-seeded Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals starting Tuesday. More

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      The Phoenix Suns Weren’t Supposed to Get Pushed to Game 7

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      The Suns have been off their game against Dallas. (So. Many. Turnovers.) But the Mavericks are flawed, too. They have one last game to get it together.If one believes in trends, it seems likely that the Phoenix Suns will win Sunday’s do-or-die Game 7 against the Dallas Mavericks in their Western Conference semifinal series.After all, the home team has won every game of this playoff series.But it wasn’t supposed to come to this for Phoenix. Not for the team that had the best regular-season record in the N.B.A. by far, and especially not after the Suns dominated their first two games against a Dallas team with limited playmaking outside of its star, Luka Doncic.On Thursday night, the Suns had a chance to send the Mavericks home for the summer, only to lay an egg. Dallas got hot from 3-point range, shooting 16 for 39 (41 percent), while Doncic bullied his way to the rim for easy dunks. Doncic also repeatedly backed down and overpowered the smaller Suns point guard Chris Paul in a matchup Dallas had been eager to exploit the entire series. Doncic ended the game with 33 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists and 4 steals.“I don’t have enough time to talk about everything that’s eating at me,” Suns Coach Monty Williams told reporters after the game. “I didn’t think we understood the desperation they were going to play with.”This has not been a typical seven-game series. It hasn’t been a slugfest with stars from both teams exchanging clutch baskets. None of the contests have been particularly competitive or come down to the final minutes. The only constants have been chippiness and trash talk.But there are precedents for a playoff series like this. In 2008, the No. 1-seeded Boston Celtics faced the No. 8-seeded Atlanta Hawks in the first round. Boston won the first two games at home in blowouts, but Atlanta repeatedly and unexpectedly held serve at home. The Celtics won Game 7 by 34 points. A similar trajectory shaped Boston’s next series, against the LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers, but those games were more competitive. Boston would go on to win the N.B.A. championship.But precedent is no guarantee, and the Suns could certainly be on their way to an embarrassing second-round exit after last year’s run to the N.B.A. finals. Last year, the Bucks and Nets traded home wins for six games in the second round, then the Bucks won the finale on the road. One more off game from Paul, or a hot game from a Mavericks role player, and the Suns could be shown the door.If the Mavericks win, they will have dethroned a Suns team that won a franchise-record 64 games, including an 18-game win streak. That kind of success is rare and difficult to repeat. For one thing, Paul, a 12-time All-Star, is 37 years old. He is still elite as a point guard and led the league in assists per game. But the list of players who excelled at age 38 is small, populated by generational players like Karl Malone, John Stockton, Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.Paul is a generational player, too, but this has not been a particularly strong postseason series for him, particularly after Games 1 and 2. Since then, he’s been dogged by foul trouble, had difficulty defending Doncic, and has only dished out six assists a game for the series after averaging 10.8 per game during the regular season.Not having a championship is a prominent hole in Paul’s illustrious résumé. He is 3-4 in Game 7s, not including the 2018 Western Conference finals against the Golden State Warriors, when he missed the final game because of injury as a member of the Houston Rockets.The Suns would also be at a crossroad with the 23-year-old Deandre Ayton, who is one of the best centers in the league and set to enter restricted free agency. Phoenix did not offer him a maximum contract offer before the season, and an early playoff exit could hurt his chances of getting one now.But the Suns have the edge entering Sunday’s game in Phoenix. They had the N.B.A.’s best home record at 32-9. They’re tested, having made the finals last year and with the experienced Paul at the reins. They’ve shown that they can withstand Doncic, who in his third playoff run and has torched the Suns, averaging 32.2 points, 9.8 rebounds and 7.5 assists through six games. Doncic has faced elimination three times in his short playoff career — including on Thursday — and he’s come up big each time, though in defeat. In a first-round Game 7 came against the Los Angeles Clippers last year, he scored 46 points in the loss. In 2020, he had 38 points in a Game 6 loss to the Clippers.The Suns have won three games despite not being able to guard Doncic.But what they may not be able to withstand are their own turnovers, which have bedeviled the Suns on the road. In Game 3, Paul and Devin Booker combined for 12 of them, more than the Mavericks. In Game 4, Booker had five. Paul had two, but played only 23 minutes because of foul trouble. During Thursday’s Game 6, Booker had eight, Paul had five and the Mavericks combined for just six.The Mavericks’ strategy to beat Phoenix has been relatively simple: Match up Doncic against Paul, or spread the floor and have Doncic or his backcourt partner, Jalen Brunson, drive and find shooters. It has mostly worked. Role players like Maxi Kleber have often come through by hitting 3s.One adjustment the Suns can counter with is stacking the paint with defenders to encourage Doncic to shoot 3s. He’s a below-average 3-point shooter, at just 29.6 percent for the series. And if he gets to the paint, the Suns need to close out on shooters to disrupt their rhythms. In Game 5, Phoenix’s best defensive performance of the series, Dallas shot 8 for 32 from 3-point range, a dismal 25 percent.Outside of Game 5, the Suns have been consistently bad on defense and only occasionally have they been able to overcome that with strong offense. It has often looked as if the Suns were rushing their offense — unusual for a Paul-led machine.“Best thing about all these playoff games is you don’t carry a 20-point lead into the next game,” Paul said Thursday. “You know what I mean? Each game has a personality of its own and now it’s down to one game.” More

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      Chris Paul’s ‘Revenge Tour’ Is No Fun for Luka Doncic

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      The second-round playoff series between Paul’s Suns, who lost in the N.B.A. finals last year, and Doncic’s Mavericks has at its center two of the game’s best point guards.Chris Paul had already started the fourth quarter by draining a long 3-pointer and passing to Cameron Johnson, his Phoenix Suns teammate, for another. It was a bad sign for the visiting Dallas Mavericks, because Paul hadn’t even called for the defensive matchup he really wanted.His next time up the court, Paul was dribbling against Reggie Bullock when Johnson set a high screen on Bullock, dragging his defender with him. That defender was Luka Doncic, who found himself guarding Paul after the switch — and even managed to poke the ball away. But after Paul regained possession, he needed about 3 nanoseconds to blow past Doncic for a layup.It was the sort of scene that kept repeating itself in the closing stages of the Suns’ 129-109 victory in Game 2 of their Western Conference semifinal series on Wednesday. The Suns were determined to force Doncic onto the ball, and then they were eager to capitalize. Doncic, who has the meaty build of a tight end at 6-foot-7 and 230 pounds, is an all-world offensive player. But his defense? For one game, at least, he went from hunter to hunted against shifty guards like Paul and Devin Booker.“Just have to play better defense,” Doncic said, “that’s it.”No one has been surprised to see two point guards take center stage in this series, which the Suns lead, 2-0, as it heads to Dallas for Game 3 on Friday. But in the process, Paul and Doncic have offered contrasting approaches. Paul has picked his moments to take charge, a luxury given the talent that surrounds him, while Doncic has tried to do it all, in large part because he has no choice.“We believe, man,” Doncic said, adding: “We’re going to believe until the end.”The Suns have been able to frustrate Doncic in many ways, even as he manages to pour in points as the driver of the Mavericks’ offense.Matt York/Associated PressDoncic has been putting up preposterous numbers, even by his gaudy standards. In Game 1, he finished with 45 points, 12 rebounds and 8 assists. In Game 2, he had 35 points, 5 rebounds and 7 assists. Mavericks Coach Jason Kidd put the pressure on Doncic’s supporting cast to assert itself in Game 3.“He had a great game,” Kidd said of Doncic, “but no one else showed. So we’ve got to get the other guys shooting the ball better. We can’t win with just him out there scoring 30 a night, not at this time of year.”For Paul, the playoffs are another opportunity — arguably his best one yet — to win his first championship, one season after the Suns fell to the Milwaukee Bucks in the N.B.A. finals. Phoenix, Booker said, is on a “revenge tour,” which Paul seems to be steering from his personal time machine. Paul finished with 28 points and 8 assists on Wednesday, a tour de force two days before his 37th birthday.“He can tell you better than I can,” Booker said, “but he’s feeling younger by the day.”In his own way, given his size and approach, Paul is unapologetically old school. Growing up in North Carolina, he was the prototypical point guard: a dazzling scorer, to be sure, but someone who was responsible, first and foremost, for involving teammates. Now, he has the institutional knowledge of 17 N.B.A. seasons informing each of his decisions.Doncic, on the other hand, is one of the league’s new-age players, a 23-year-old prodigy with a multidimensional game that was informed by his childhood in Slovenia, where children, no matter how big or how small, learned the fundamentals of shooting and passing.In this playoff series, the throwback has the edge. It helps, of course, that the Suns are a deeper team and that Paul plays alongside Booker, a three-time All-Star and one of the league’s most gifted scorers.For three quarters of Wednesday’s game, Paul largely created for his teammates, attempting just nine shots. He exploded in the fourth quarter, scoring 14 points while shooting 6 of 7 from the field.“It’s amazing,” the Suns’ Jae Crowder said. “For the first two quarters, he’s relaxed, chilling. He’s not too aggressive, just reading the game. And then he has a switch where he just turns it on.”Booker, 25, thought back to his childhood when he would watch games with his father, Melvin Booker, a former N.B.A. guard who shaped his son through daily workouts. In front of the TV, they would study Paul together. Devin was 5 years old, he said, exaggerating modestly.“See how he makes sure everyone’s involved?” Booker recalled his father asking him. “And then he picks his times when he’s going to take over the game?”Booker added: “I’ve always admired the way he does that. He’s just in control at all times. He’s two, three steps ahead of what the other team is doing.”Paul has long been known as one of the N.B.A.’s best passers.Joe Camporeale/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAs Paul surged in the fourth quarter, Doncic, having already carried such an enormous load for his team, seemed to tire — especially on defense. Kidd said he would need to concoct a plan to ensure that Doncic’s teammates “do a better job of helping him.” Perhaps the Mavericks need to avoid switching on screens so frequently, or perhaps they need to send more double-teams at Booker and Paul. Easier said than done.Paul joined Booker at his postgame news conference in time to answer a question about the importance of making Doncic work at both ends. Booker glanced at Paul and seemed to smirk, as if to say they had done their job picking him apart. Paul, forever the cagey veteran, chose the diplomatic route.“We just try to play,” he said. “Take what the defense gives us.”It was an exhausting night for Doncic. As he made his way off the court at halftime, he wheeled around to bark at a heckler.“He was just saying something reckless,” Doncic said. “If it’s something normal, I would not even look because I don’t care. But sometimes you’re in a bad mood and they say some bad stuff. It’s normal. We’re people, man. It’s normal to turn around.”Ahead of Game 3, Doncic had a chance to plot some revenge of his own. More

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      NBA Christmas Day Games 2021: What to Know

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      A coronavirus outbreak across the league has cast a shadow over Saturday’s highlight slate of games, with several key players unavailable to compete.The N.B.A. has long looked to Christmas Day as a highlight of the young season, a made-for-TV spectacle that brings together many of the best teams and best players for a daylong extravaganza of basketball fireworks.This year? Not exactly.Dozens of players have been cycling through the N.B.A.’s coronavirus health and safety protocols in recent days, forcing teams to improvise by signing scores of replacement players to 10-day contracts. So if you’re expecting to see Kevin Durant lead the Nets into their game against the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday, you’ll be disappointed: On Friday, Durant remained in the protocols. But fans should be able to catch the surprise return of Joe Johnson, whom the Boston Celtics signed on Wednesday to shore up their own battered roster — the same Joe Johnson who is now 40 and had last appeared on an N.B.A. court in 2018.The pandemic has wrought havoc on the holiday season, and the N.B.A. has not been immune. The league even issued a memo this week to the teams scheduled to play on Saturday that their tip times could be tweaked if any of the prime-time games are postponed. (The Nets, for example, have already had three games scuttled over the past week because of low roster numbers.)For now, and keep in mind that this is subject to change, here is a look at the five games penciled in for Saturday:All times Eastern.Atlanta Hawks (15-16) at Knicks (14-18), Noon, ESPNKnicks forward Julius Randle is having an up-and-down season, but his short-handed team will need him against the Hawks on Saturday.Mary Altaffer/Associated PressSurprising runs to the playoffs last season led to these teams meeting in the first round, spurring talk about the two franchises resurrecting. The Hawks easily dispatched the Knicks then, with the Hawks’ star player, Trae Young, delighting in quieting abrasive Knicks fans, while the Knicks’ top player, Julius Randle, had a terrible series.The matchup looked like it would start a rivalry between two up-and-coming teams on their way to the Eastern Conference’s elite.But this season, both teams, far from being resurrected, have been two of the more disappointing teams in the league. The Knicks’ new additions, Evan Fournier and Kemba Walker, have been mostly underwhelming, though Walker, after being benched for several games, has been on a tear in a recent return to the lineup. And while Atlanta had one of the N.B.A.’s worst defenses, its stellar offense hasn’t been enough to compensate for it. Young, already one of the league’s best offensive players, is having the best year of his career, while Randle has struggled.The good news is that the same thing happened last season, and both teams had impressive second half turnarounds to make the playoffs.The Christmas game will undoubtedly lose some of its luster with several key players likely to miss the game as a result of the N.B.A.’s health and protocols, including Young, Clint Capela and Danilo Gallinari from Atlanta, and Nerlens Noel from the Knicks. Derrick Rose, one of the Knicks’ lone bright spots against Atlanta in the playoffs, is slated to miss several weeks with an ankle injury.Boston Celtics (16-16) at Milwaukee Bucks (21-13), 2:30 p.m., ABCJayson Tatum’s shooting percentage is down slightly this season, but he is still Boston’s leading scorer with 25.6 points per game.Charles Krupa/Associated PressFresh off their first N.B.A. championship since 1971, the Bucks knew the early part of their schedule would pose some challenges. For starters, last season’s playoff run extended into late July. Then, two of the team’s best players, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday, helped the United States men’s basketball team win gold at the Tokyo Olympics in August. The Bucks subsequently reconvened for the start of their season and lost eight of their first 15 games.Despite a shifting roster — Middleton and Giannis Antetokounmpo are among the players who have missed games after landing in the league’s health and safety protocols — the Bucks seem to be finding their footing as they eye another title. That’s no great stretch, thanks to the presence of Antetokounmpo, a two-time winner of the Most Valuable Player Award who still seems determined to expand his game. He is expected to play on Christmas after missing the past five games.The Celtics, meanwhile, are enduring growing pains under Ime Udoka, their first-year coach. From the start of training camp, Udoka has stressed the need for his players to pass more willingly around the perimeter. But too often, the ball still sticks — frequently in the hands of Jayson Tatum, a talented young player who has struggled with his shooting this season. The Celtics have also been hindered by injuries to Jaylen Brown.Boston needs to play a much more complete brand of basketball to have a shot of landing in the postseason, let alone to challenge the likes of the Bucks.Golden State Warriors (26-6) at Phoenix Suns (26-5), 5 p.m., ABCChris Paul leads the league in assists per game, which has helped his Phoenix Suns stay among the West’s best despite injuries.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesThis game features the top two teams in the Western Conference. The Suns are hoping to improve upon their trip to the finals last year, while Golden State looks to continue its resurgence.In November, the N.B.A. began investigating Robert Sarver, the Suns’ owner, after ESPN published accusations of racism and sexism against him from what ESPN said were current and former Suns employees. If the specter of that investigation has affected the team, it hasn’t shown on the court.Phoenix has looked formidable in Coach Monty Williams’ third year with the franchise. After a 1-3 start to the season, the Suns went on an 18-game winning streak, which set a franchise record for consecutive wins. That included a win over Golden State and ended with a loss to Golden State. Aided by point guard Chris Paul’s steady veteran hand (he leads the league in assists per game), they’ve weathered injuries. Deandre Ayton missed eight games with a leg injury and illness, and Devin Booker missed seven games with a hamstring injury.Golden State awaits the return of Klay Thompson, Stephen Curry’s sharpshooting counterpart, who has been absent for more than two years with two serious injuries. He could return soon, but not in time for this game. The team has rocketed to the top of the conference even without him.Curry set the N.B.A. record for career 3s last week and has been playing well enough to merit consideration for his third M.V.P. Award. Role players, such as Jordan Poole and Gary Payton II, have made major contributions as well.Nets (21-9) at Los Angeles Lakers (16-17), 8 p.m., ABC and ESPNThe Nets have been hit hard by the virus recently, with so many players, including James Harden, unavailable that three games were postponed.Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesIdeally, this would be a matchup of the Nets’ Kevin Durant against his longtime elite contemporary, LeBron James of the Lakers. And in theory, there would be other stars, too, like Kyrie Irving for the Nets and Anthony Davis for the Lakers.But it’s not to be. Davis is out for several weeks because of a knee injury. And the Nets are missing so many players as a result of the league’s health and safety protocols — including Durant and Irving — that their last three games have been postponed. On Thursday, Nets Coach Steve Nash announced that James Harden had left protocols, making him available against the Lakers.For this matchup, the Nets, who are in first place in the Eastern Conference, are taking on a Lakers team fighting just to stay in the conversation to make the playoffs.The Lakers’ supporting cast around James and Davis, thus far, has proved to be ill-fitting, and the roster has dealt with a scourge of injuries. Russell Westbrook, the Lakers’ most high-profile off-season addition, has struggled at times. James is putting up exceptional numbers for a 36-year-old, but appears to be finally slowing down: He’s more reliant on his jumper than ever before, averaging a career high in 3-point attempts per game, and a career low in free-throw attempts per game. James is still one of the best players in the league, but it’s not apparent that he can carry an offense by himself like he used to.With the Nets slated to be without so many key players, this should have been marked as an easy win for a James-led team. But not this year. These Lakers, even at full strength, are mediocre and prone to coast through games. Right now, it’s a tossup.Dallas Mavericks (15-16) at Utah Jazz (22-9), 10:30 p.m., ESPNDonovan Mitchell, left, and the Utah Jazz will face a Mavericks team that has been dealing with injuries all season.Rick Bowmer/Associated PressWhat’s regular-season dominance without playoff success? The Utah Jazz found themselves confronting that question last season when they finished the regular season with the best record in the N.B.A., but only reached the second round of the playoffs.That’s meant so far this season their game-to-game focus is on not just their early wins and losses, but on what lessons they can take into the postseason.“If you’re perfect in November, no one’s going to care come playoff time,” Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell said.Mitchell has led the Jazz offense with more than 25 points per game, while Bojan Bogdanovic and Jordan Clarkson, the league’s reigning sixth man of the year, have also been important pieces.Defensively they are led by Rudy Gobert, who is the league’s best with 15.1 rebounds per game and also contributes more than 2 blocks per game.They’ll face a Mavericks team that has dealt with injuries all season, including to guard Luka Doncic, their best player, who is expected to miss this game because of the league’s health protocols.Although Doncic leads the team with 25.6 points per game, the Mavericks are not dramatically different statistically when he’s on the court. But they are more fun to watch. If Doncic misses the Christmas Day game, a Dallas team ravaged by the virus and injuries will have a tough time making a game against the Jazz interesting. More

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      Luka Doncic Autographs Questioned Among Collectors

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      Handwriting experts disagree about whether the N.B.A. star’s signatures could be from one person. And collectors have brewed a bigger conspiracy theory — that Doncic’s mother signed his cards.Luka Doncic can appear to lack no superpower on the basketball court, where the 22-year-old Slovenian star regularly treats N.B.A. fans to long-distance floaters, nutmeg passes and playoff fireworks. But cyber sleuths have been flummoxed by the inconsistency he displays during a more pedestrian task: writing his name.Many collectors believe that an elegant signature of Doncic’s name on the lone copy of a basketball card that sold for $4.6 million this year was written not by him, but by his mother. Like the signature seen on many of his other highly coveted trading cards, the blue script is not the tilting scribble Doncic used during his teenage years.Although player autographs evolve and handwriting analysis is subjective, the conjecture has become a powder keg for the sports card industry, which has thrived during the coronavirus pandemic.When live sports went silent last year, some people discovered the drama of watching others rip open expensive packs of cards on YouTube. Speculators stripped Target and Walmart shelves of lucrative boxes, flipping them for fivefold prices. Bolstered by stay-at-home orders and stimulus funds, the frenzy shared the get-rich-quick impulses that propelled cryptocurrency and meme stocks.Investors also flocked to grading companies, which by authenticating autographs and rating cards as pristine — sharp corners, smooth edges, perfect centering and an unmarred surface — can spin cardboard into gold. The demand was so great that Professional Sports Authenticator, which charges at least $150 to grade a card, temporarily refused most submissions.Few of the companies that benefited as money poured in to the collection industry are willing to discuss the ecosystem of athlete autographs, which are used as a key way to tantalize customers. Among collectors, autographed cards found within sealed packs are called “hits.”Luka Doncic signing autographs in 2019, during his rookie season with the Dallas Mavericks.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesRumors of ghost signers spring every so often, with the signatures of workaday players and superstar athletes like Shaquille O’Neal and Cam Newton sometimes questioned. This summer, collectors were startled by apparent similarities between the autographs of the Charlotte Hornets teammates LaMelo Ball and Miles Bridges. And the companies that make sports cards — and imprint them with a guarantee of authenticity — have acknowledged a few cases when athletes did not sign their own cards.“This whole thing is just an honor system,” Adam Gellman, who runs the blog Sports Cards Uncensored, said of how card companies like Panini obtain most of their autographs through the mail. “Historically, players have abused it to the nth degree.”Early doubts regarding Doncic’s signature were highlighted in an extensive Blowout Cards forum thread in early 2019, before the promising Dallas Mavericks rookie had generated the stream of triple-doubles that amplified fervor among collectors. The user who started the thread had previously identified fake basketball cards from the 1990s that were of such high quality that they had fooled grading companies.Card aficionados traced the evolution of Doncic’s autograph, debating whether the “Luka” signature he has used in person — which slants to the right, with narrow letters and significant peaks and valleys — could be from the same hand as the symmetrical, loopy cursive known as the “Lulu” signature. (There is a wide spectrum of universally accepted Doncic autographs, and not all “Lulu” signatures have drawn suspicion, but the questioned ones are in that script.)A signature from an Upper Deck Exquisite Collection card.The signature from the $4.6 million Doncic card.Matt ChaseIt is practically impossible to prove who signed a particular card; without video proof, not even a “Sasquatch” signature could be unequivocally discredited. Yet that has not stopped some collectors from speculating that Doncic’s mother is responsible for the “Lulu” signatures, which they describe as more feminine.There is zero evidence for that specific theory, which has become a pervasive inside joke in the industry, but the larger skepticism surrounding the “Lulu” autographs has persuaded some people to purge those versions of the cards from their collections.Doncic declined to comment, a Mavericks spokeswoman said.His mother, Mirjam Poterbin, said the idea that she had signed any of his cards was a crazy rumor. “I don’t even know how people can say things like this,” she said, adding, “He’s probably changing his writing — I don’t know. I don’t know.”Many star athletes, including Michael Jordan and Patrick Mahomes, have simplified their autographs, with the different signatures containing underlying consistencies, such as the relative heights and widths of letters. Skeptics of the “Lulu” signatures argue that it is unusual for an autograph to become neater and to take longer to write.Three forensic handwriting analysts with no ties to the sports industry disagreed when shown examples of the “Luka” and “Lulu” autographs. One said no determination about their authenticity could be made. One said they were unlikely to be written by the same person. And one said the signatures were generally consistent. A common thread, each expert said, was that the simple four-letter autograph would be easy to forge.The “Lulu” signatures are primarily on cards printed by Panini, which holds an exclusive license with the N.B.A. and directly reaches contracts with athletes for their autographs; it announced an exclusive deal with Doncic this year. Panini referred questions to a public relations agency, which did not answer inquiries about the authenticity of Doncic’s signatures, or how the company validates autographs.Several months after the buzzy forum thread in early 2019, Upper Deck, a Panini competitor, posted an Instagram video of Doncic signing cards in its Exquisite Collection. For several interested observers, the swift strokes that produced two long, angled consonants in “Luka” also sharpened Occam’s razor.“When we hear of issues where authenticity is being questioned, we like to do everything to let people know they’re getting the right thing,” said Chris Carlin, Upper Deck’s head of customer experience.Top rookies often sign cards at in-person promotional events. But it is otherwise common for athletes to privately sign sheets of stickers that will be affixed to cards, along with a legally binding affidavit that promises the autographs are theirs.When Upper Deck receives a stack of signed stickers through the mail, Carlin said, the company goes “through it with a fine-toothed comb,” rejecting those that have smeared in transit or that raise authenticity questions. “Usually we eliminate it before it ever gets out to the market,” he said.Yet there have been times when companies have recalled autographed cards. In 2017, Panini said that in “an extremely unfortunate situation,” N.F.L. defensive end Takkarist McKinley was not always the person who had signed his rookie cards “Takk.” Two months later, Panini recalled some cards of Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, announcing that it chose to remanufacture them “after being contacted by an autograph authenticator and following an internal quality control process.”Now the rumors about Doncic’s autographs have some collectors wary.When his official memorabilia website offered signed photos as a promotion last year, a Facebook thread was inundated with questions about their authenticity. The store, which is based in Slovenia and did not respond to requests for comment, dutifully responded that it had personally witnessed his autograph session.“Luka has really special way of signing,” it said in one reply. “If you compare Luka’s signature a year ago and today, yeah it’s different. It’s just the way he does it. Even his signature today is different then 8 months ago. Who knows with what he will surprise us in future.”Interest in Luka Doncic cards has risen alongside his star power in the N.B.A.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesDoncic was named the most valuable player of the Euroleague at age 19 and had immediate success in the N.B.A., making two All-Star teams after being named rookie of the year. This summer he led Slovenia to a fourth-place finish in its first Olympic basketball appearance.“He cares about one thing and one thing alone, and that’s winning,” said Doncic’s agent, Bill Duffy, who added that the athlete did not relish the growing off-court obligations.“Quite frankly,” he added, “everything else is just burdensome.”Asked directly whether someone other than Doncic was responsible for any of his autographs, Duffy said the accusation was “false” before deferring to a spokeswoman for the agency, who said, “There has been no fraud, whatever the word is, with any of these signings.”Collectors who agree that the “Lulu” signatures are legitimate point to a gift for the Slovenian president that features one, a skipped pen stroke that has been observed in both archetypes of autographs, and the fact that grading companies authenticate them.A spokeswoman for Beckett Grading Services said in an email that outside speculation about Doncic signatures did not influence its autograph experts, who consider “the letter shape and formation, the pen pressure, the flow, rhythm, conviction and spontaneity of the signature, and letter size and spacing to determine if it is consistent with known exemplars.” Professional Sports Authenticator declined to comment.Another common defense of the “Lulu” signatures is that the variations can be attributed to fatigue from frequent signings. Industry experts said that it took about an hour to sign 400 stickers and that Doncic might have signed at least 10,000 as a rookie.Gellman, who runs Sports Cards Uncensored, dismissed that explanation, noting that he once watched the quarterback Johnny Manziel replicate his intricate signature for four hours.“Athletes are required to sit and do this for so many parts of their life that it becomes secondhand to sign everything the same,” Gellman said.Ultimately, the rumblings about Doncic’s signature have not dulled the top end of his card market.Nick Fiorella, an entrepreneur who puts most of his disposable income into sports cards, said his riskiest purchase was the $4.6 million Doncic card with an N.B.A. logo and a “Lulu” autograph. But he is betting that the player and the hobby will continue to soar.“To me, if it’s him or his mom or whatever, it’s always going to be his one-of-one,” Fiorella said. “If he becomes a transcendent player, it doesn’t really matter if I signed it.”Sheelagh McNeill contributed research. More

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      Blazers’ Billups Hire Draws Attention to Sexual Assault Accusation

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      Chauncey Billups was announced as Portland’s head coach on Tuesday as a team executive dodged and deflected questions about a 1997 sexual assault accusation against Billups.At a news conference on Tuesday, the top basketball executive for the Portland Trail Blazers dodged or deflected questions about a 1997 sexual assault accusation against Chauncey Billups, whom he was announcing as the team’s new head coach. A public relations official for Portland cut off a questioner entirely, and the executive, Neil Olshey, would not elaborate on an independent investigation into the incident he said the team had commissioned.Billups’s hire has elicited criticism both from within and outside Portland’s fan base because of the accusation, which was made during Billups’s 1997-98 rookie season as a player with the Boston Celtics.Olshey, the Blazers’ president of basketball operations, introduced Billups on Tuesday and said that he had “been successful at everything he’s done in his life, on and off the court.”He also said that the Blazers “took the allegations very seriously” and that “other N.B.A. organizations, business partners, television networks, regional networks have all enthusiastically in the past and present offered Chauncey high-profile positions within their organizations.” Billups is currently finishing his first season as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers, who are in the Western Conference finals, and he was previously an analyst for ESPN.Olshey said the team-initiated investigation was done with Billups’s support. “The findings of that incident corroborated Chauncey’s recollection of the events that nothing non-consensual happened,” he said. “We stand by Chauncey. Everyone in the organization.”Neil Olshey, right, Portland’s president of basketball operations, said the team commissioned an independent investigation of the sexual assault accusation against Billups, left.Craig Mitchelldyer/Associated PressWhen asked by a reporter to give more details on the investigation, Olshey declined.“So that’s proprietary, Sean,” Olshey said, referring to the N.B.A. reporter Sean Highkin. “So you’re just going to have to take our word that we hired an experienced firm that ran an investigation that gave us the results we’ve already discussed.”Jason Quick, a reporter for The Athletic, followed up later to ask Billups about the impact the incident had on him, after Billups had said that “not a day that goes by that I don’t think about how every decision that we make could have a profound impact on a person’s life.” Olshey took a sip of bottled water and appeared to glance at a public relations official for the organization, who then cut off Quick, though Billups appeared willing to respond.“Jason, we appreciate your question,” the official said. “We’ve addressed this. It’s been asked and answered. Happy to move on to the next question here.”The 1997 accusation came from a woman who said in a lawsuit that on the night of Nov. 9, following an evening at a Boston comedy club, she was raped by Billups, Ron Mercer and Michael Irvin — who is of no relation to the former N.F.L. player — at Antoine Walker’s home. Walker and Mercer were Billups’s teammates in Boston, while Irvin was Walker’s roommate. No criminal charges were filed. Billups and Mercer settled with the woman for an undisclosed amount in 2000, and Walker also settled a lawsuit with the woman soon after. Billups denied any nonconsensual contact, but said he had sex with her.The lawsuit did not affect Billups’s career prospects. It rarely came up, if at all. He played 17 years in the N.B.A., made five All-Star teams and won the N.B.A. finals Most Valuable Player Award in 2004.“I learned at a very young age as a player, and not only a player, but a young man, a young adult that every decision has consequences,” Billups said on Tuesday, in addressing the accusation, “and that’s led to some really, really healthy but tough conversations that I’ve had to have with my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time in 1997, and my daughters about what actually happened and about what they may have to read about me in the news.”Damian Lillard, Portland’s star guard, publicly lobbied for the team to hire Jason Kidd as its coach and spoke highly of Billups. He has since said he did not know about the accusation against Billups.Troy Wayrynen/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe hiring of Billups immediately spurred a backlash, with the Trail Blazers being accused of glossing over the assault accusation at the expense of more experienced candidates like Becky Hammon, the seven-year San Antonio Spurs assistant who was a finalist for the job. Olshey said more than 20 candidates were considered for the role. Billups’s only coaching experience is this season with the Clippers.The Billups hiring also has brought criticism on the franchise’s biggest star, Damian Lillard, who spoke glowingly about Billups and publicly lobbied for the team to hire the former point guard Jason Kidd, who was recently hired as the coach of the Dallas Mavericks after working this season as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers. In 2001, Kidd pleaded guilty to spousal abuse against his then-wife, Joumana Kidd.On Twitter, Lillard addressed some of the criticism for supporting Kidd and Billups, saying: “Really? I was asked what coaches I like of the names I ‘heard’ and I named them. Sorry I wasn’t aware of their history I didn’t read the news when I was 7-8 yrs old. I don’t support Those things … but if this the route y’all wana come at me… say less.”At the news conference, Olshey said that Lillard had been “involved in the process” for hiring a new coach and that he attended some of the video conference interviews. According to Olshey, Lillard also spoke to Billups directly before the hire.“We have different sectors in this organization,” Olshey said. “And, you know, Dame represents the player sector, and we took his input in the process. We value it. It’s important to us to kind of know where he stands. But at the end of the day, this is an organizational decision and the organization believes that Chauncey is the best person to be our head coach.” More

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      For Four Key Teams, the Off-Season Begins Early

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      The Lakers have to figure out how to regroup, the Mavericks need to support Luka Doncic. The Celtics are shaking things up and Portland is looking for a coach.No playoff team seeded seventh has won an N.B.A. championship. That did not stop oddsmakers from listing the Los Angeles Lakers behind only the Nets as title favorites when the playoffs began. Nor did it stop the second-seeded Phoenix Suns from ousting the Lakers immediately.The Atlanta Hawks’ five-game dismissal of the Knicks was the only surprise, based on seedings, among the eight series in the opening round of the playoffs, but you have probably heard my stance by now, via traditional or social media: Round 1 was bonkers even without results that could be classified as upsets.The rapid demise of the defending champion Lakers was merely one source of chaos. After detailing many of them in Sunday’s column, let’s zoom in on four teams that have already been ushered into the off-season.The first first-round exit of LeBron James’s 18-year career was an aberration on many levels.The Lakers slipped so far in the standings largely because James (27) and Anthony Davis (36) combined to miss 63 games. James had never previously faced a first-round matchup against the 82-game equivalent of a 58-win team.Losing early does come with a silver lining. With Davis ailing and little hope of a deep run, the Lakers were better off bowing out so their stars could have the longest recuperation period possible. To ensure that last season’s title at the Walt Disney World bubble is not the only one they win together, James and Davis clearly need the extra time to recover after the way they responded to the shortest turnaround from one season to the next (71 days) in N.B.A. history.The Lakers’ larger problem is that James, who turns 37 in December, and Davis, whose durability has never been questioned louder, are not assured of being surrounded by more reliable teammates next season. We detailed in early April how the ballyhooed off-season acquisitions of Dennis Schroder, Montrezl Harrell, Marc Gasol and Wes Matthews had not panned out. It got only worse after that for the Lakers’ role players; and the March acquisition of Andre Drummond proved even more ill-fitting.The Lakers promised Drummond a starting role to secure his commitment in free agency, according to two people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. By Game 6, Drummond was rooted to the bench, receiving zero minutes in an elimination game. Worse, with such limited salary-cap flexibility to make changes, the Lakers likely must pay Schroder more than they’d like to in free agency — after Schroder turned down a four-year extension offer worth more than $80 million during the season — or lose him without the means to sign a suitable replacement.The refusal to surrender Talen Horton-Tucker in trade talks for Kyle Lowry will likewise linger as another source of regret if Horton-Tucker, 20, doesn’t blossom next season or figure in a helpful trade. He earned only 48 minutes of playing time across four games against the Suns.The Mavericks heard the best news they possibly could on the day after their first-round unraveling against the Clippers.Luka Doncic all but announced on Monday that he would sign a five-year contract extension in August.There was no grave concern in Dallas that Doncic wouldn’t sign a deal expected to exceed $200 million, which would be the richest rookie extension in league history, but the public reassurance won’t hurt given the daunting challenges the Mavericks face to put a better team around him.They owe Kristaps Porzingis, a former Knick, nearly $102 million over the next three seasons, which makes him incredibly difficult to trade after a postseason in which he had a marginal impact offensively and, of greater concern, was punished defensively. The Mavericks surrendered two future first-round picks to the Knicks and signed Porzingis to a five-year, $158 million contract before he ever logged a second for them in the belief he would mesh well with Doncic and provide elite rim protection. Neither is happening after Porzingis sustained the second serious knee injury of his career (a right lateral meniscus tear) in last season’s bubble.With limited flexibility to upgrade the roster, the Dallas Mavericks need Kristaps Porzingis to develop into the sidekick for Luka Doncic that they had envisioned. Kevin Jairaj/USA Today Sports, via ReutersTim Hardaway Jr. unexpectedly emerged as Dallas’s more dependable former Knick, prompting cynics in Dallas and beyond to increasingly mock it as “the Tim Hardaway Jr. trade.” I reported on May 27 that there was confidence within the Mavericks’ organization that they could re-sign Hardaway in free agency, but doing so would leave them without any wiggle room to make another splashy signing.Mark Cuban, the team’s owner, made it clear he had no intention of making a coaching change despite Rick Carlisle’s sixth successive first-round exit since Dallas’s championship in 2011. As a result, there is a strong likelihood that the key figures in Doncic’s orbit next season will be mostly the same. Doncic’s conditioning and fourth-quarter freshness can certainly be nitpicked, but he averaged 35.7 points, 7.9 rebounds and 10.3 assists while being frequently hounded by the Clippers’ two-way menace, Kawhi Leonard. Can Dallas really ask for more?Short-term improvement for the Mavericks thus could hinge on whether they can salvage Porzingis, who, at 25, at least seems to understand that he has to adapt to what Doncic needs.“The game’s evolving,” Porzingis said. “The way I was playing in New York, a lot of post-ups, barely any teams do those kinds of things anymore, so my game has to evolve and I have to find ways I can be effective.”Danny Ainge coached the Phoenix Suns for three-plus seasons before returning to the team he was most associated with as a player and becoming one of the game’s most successful executives with the Celtics.Brad Stevens coached the Celtics for eight seasons and will now try to make the same transition Ainge did.The move makes sense only because Celtics management is known to love Stevens and dread change. Ainge had a successful N.B.A. career as a player, coach and broadcaster before he took over Boston’s front office in May 2003. Stevens has only ever been a coach at the highest levels and will have to overcome even more skepticism about his preparedness for the job than he did when he left Butler University for the N.B.A. in July 2013.Whispers in the past week that the N.B.A. coaching grind had begun to wear on Stevens, 44, are the most concerning aspect about the Celtics’ abrupt power shift. The front-office grind can be even more withering.It should help Stevens that the well-regarded assistant general manager Mike Zarren is expected to expand his responsibility and lend considerable guidance. Besides hiring his own replacement on the bench, Stevens has to overcome limited flexibility to improve a roster around Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown that Ainge said in a February radio interview was “not good.”I wondered at the time why Ainge was willing to put public pressure on himself to make in-season upgrades that he was ultimately unable to deliver. Chances are Ainge already knew, deep down, he would be stepping down at season’s end.Trail Blazers General Manager Neil Olshey said on Monday that he planned to evaluate “20 to 25 candidates” to replace Terry Stotts as coach.The expectation in league coaching circles nonetheless persists that Olshey already knows he wants to hire the former N.B.A. finals M.V.P. Chauncey Billups, an assistant to Tyronn Lue with the Los Angeles Clippers, to take over.Other opportunities could materialize for the in-demand Billups, but his path to the Portland job opened up considerably when Jason Kidd, an assistant coach to Frank Vogel with the Lakers and Damian Lillard’s preferred choice to succeed Stotts, withdrew from consideration before the search really started. Kidd wanted no part of Lillard pushing him on a resistant G.M.The onus, though, is on Olshey to mollify a frustrated Lillard, who is rapidly gaining on Washington’s Bradley Beal as the star some rival front offices want to believe they have a chance of pilfering. Referring to Lillard (or Beal) as a disgruntled star might be a step too far, but he appears to have begun questioning his well-chronicled loyalty to the franchise that drafted him out of Weber State. After Portland’s first-round exit to Denver, Lillard captioned a photo with a “How long should I stay dedicated?” reference borrowed from the rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle, who was fatally shot in 2019.Lillard averaged 34.3 points and 10.2 assists per game against Denver. It’s hard to imagine him delivering more — or the tension fading fast after Olshey insisted that the Blazers’ early exit and regular-season defensive rating of 29th were not “a product of the roster.” Olshey’s unwillingness to take any blame for Portland’s fourth first-round exit in five seasons had people buzzing leaguewide about his blame-free stance.The Scoop @TheSteinLineJune 7Luka Doncic on signing the looming $200 million contract extension he will be offered this summer: “I think you know the answer.”Early estimates have the rookie extension this off-season for Luka Doncic crossing the $200 million threshold over five years and the Mavericks, league sources say, naturally intend to offer it to Doncic once free agency begins in August.June 5The Magic have interest in former Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts, league sources say, after Orlando and Steve Clifford parted ways today.Stotts is also said to be drawing interest from Indiana as the Pacers decide whether to retain or replace Nate Bjorkgren after Year 1. Stotts coached Portland to eight straight playoff berths and one conference finals, exiting after a disappointing first-round loss to Denver.Corner ThreeLuka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks had a painful collapse against Paul George and the Los Angeles Clippers. How painful is a matter of opinion.Ashley Landis/Associated PressYou ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.(Questions may be lightly edited or condensed for clarity.)Q: This Dallas fan finds the 2007 first-round loss by the top-seeded Mavericks to No. 8 Golden State much more painful than the loss to Miami in the 2006 finals. How many upsets have we seen where No. 8 beats No. 1? — Mark CunninghamStein: I expected some Mavericks fans to quibble with my recent assertions, both in story form and on Twitter, that Dallas’s collapse(s) in its first-round series against the Clippers would land in the same ZIP code as the Mavericks’ fold in the 2006 finals against Miami after winning the first two games.You’ve surprised me, though. I haven’t received any other messages (to my knowledge) that dredged up the Mavericks’ first-round pratfall in 2007 against the We Believe Warriors — which put Dirk Nowitzki in the uncomfortable position of having to accept the league’s Most Valuable Player Award after Dallas had been eliminated from the playoffs — as their low point.It’s a good reminder that these sorts of sporting heartbreaks can hit everybody differently.I noted in the piece I wrote after the Mavericks lost Games 3 and 4 at home to the Clippers, probably better than I did in a subsequent tweet, that the pain inflicted by any first-round series outcome can’t really compare with a defeat in the N.B.A. finals. Yet I am holding firm on my contention that the leads Dallas just squandered against the Clippers amount to another all-timer collapse, no matter what round they occurred in, because it wasn’t just a 2-0 series lead that slipped.The Mavericks won the first two games of the series on the road, then took a 30-11 lead at home in Game 3 that had the Clippers’ Nicolas Batum feeling as though Los Angeles was “one or two plays away to almost get swept.” Then the Mavericks responded to their two home losses by winning Game 5 at Staples Center to set up a chance to close the series out at home with just one more win.For all the shortcomings of Luka Doncic’s supporting cast, which have become a frequent talking point given the Mavericks’ inability to capitalize on Doncic’s historic production in the series, Dallas should have been able to advance to the second round if it was capable of winning three games on the Clippers’ floor. It will go down as a slice of ignominy that I suspect will endure, even if Doncic goes on to reach the same sort of championship heights Nowitzki did.On the historical front: Golden State’s upset of Dallas in 2007 was the first upset for a No. 8 seed against the top seed since the N.B.A. instituted a best-of-seven format for the first round in the 2002-3 season. Memphis did it to San Antonio in 2011 and Philadelphia repeated the feat in 2012 against Chicago — but only after the Bulls lost Derrick Rose to a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in Game 1. Q: Don’t show interest in Terry Stotts unless you’ve let Nate Bjorkgren go. — Wes Johnson (Indianapolis)Stein: This Pacers fan responded with dismay to the reports over the weekend, including one from me, that Indiana had interest in Stotts after he was ousted by the Portland Trail Blazers — but before Indiana actually had an opening. I totally get the dismay, too. It can be a cold, cold league sometimes, and this is definitely one of those times.Bjorkgren has been in limbo since reports of friction in his first season as Pacers coach surfaced in early May. It was difficult to imagine then how Bjorkgren, as a rookie coach whose most notable prior head coaching experience came in the G League, could survive such open discussion of behind-the-scenes tumult.Kevin Pritchard, Indiana’s president of basketball operations, only added to the uncertainty in a virtual news conference on May 24 when he said he was “not committing either way” about bringing Bjorkgren back for Year 2. The working assumption in league circles since that statement was that the Pacers were trying to determine through back channels if they had a shot at hiring a proven coach, like Stotts, before determining Bjorkgren’s fate.The Pacers clearly don’t want to let Bjorkgren go and then strike out on top targets, which would only add to their drama while Nate McMillan, abruptly ousted by Indiana after last season, has the Atlanta Hawks unexpectedly competing for a spot in the Eastern Conference finals. It is not inconceivable that Bjorkgren could end up staying, perhaps with a reshuffled staff, but the optics are undeniably unseemly.Q: Cheers to all the N.B.A. intelligentsia who fooled us into thinking Nets-Bucks was going to be a series. — @yagofidani from TwitterStein: Count me among the guilty. I thought Milwaukee took a significant step forward by sweeping Miami in Round 1. I thought the Bucks, with the additions of Jrue Holiday and P.J. Tucker, were as well suited to guard the Nets as anyone. I certainly thought that losing James Harden to a hamstring injury in the opening minute of Game 1 would hurt the Nets more than it has.It’s too soon to write off the Bucks as the series shifts to Milwaukee for Game 3 on Thursday, but the prospect of the Nets losing four of five games — to anyone — is difficult to imagine when they are moving the ball the way they are. Ditto when Blake Griffin looks reborn as a role player and defender, and when the unheralded Bruce Brown and Mike James have been so solid.The lingering nature of hamstring injuries is such that the Nets have to brace for the idea that Harden could miss the rest of the series, or longer, but they are functioning as well as possible without him. I will leave it to someone else to predict that a loud home crowd is enough to inspire the Bucks to disrupt that.Numbers GameJaVale McGee, center, is tied with Danny Green for the most championship rings among current players still alive in this year’s playoffs. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images0None of the eight franchises remaining in the N.B.A. playoffs have won a championship since the league’s 16-team playoff format was instituted in 1983-84. Seventeen of the N.B.A.’s last 22 championships have been won by the Los Angeles Lakers, San Antonio, Golden State and Miami, as neatly noted here by my former N.B.A. bubble neighbor Ben Golliver of The Washington Post.8Only eight players left in the playoffs have won an N.B.A. championship ring, according to my pal Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press, but none with their current team. Philadelphia’s Danny Green and Denver’s JaVale McGee have won three rings each. The Nets’ Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard and Rajon Rondo of the Los Angeles Clippers have two rings apiece. The Nets’ Kyrie Irving, Philadelphia’s Dwight Howard and the Clippers’ Serge Ibaka are one-time champions.3The first round of this season’s playoffs was just the third time since the N.B.A. expanded to four playoff rounds in 1975 that both teams from the previous N.B.A. finals failed to reach the second round. It also happened in 2007 (Miami and Dallas) and 2015 (Miami and San Antonio), according to the Elias Sports Bureau.4-0Coach Tyronn Lue improved to 4-0 in Game 7s after the Los Angeles Clippers beat Dallas in Sunday’s series decider. The Clippers are just the fifth team in league history, in 31 tries, to win a best-of-seven series after losing the first two games at home, and Lue’s willingness to make major adjustments was a key factor. Lue essentially removed his starting point guard, Patrick Beverley, from the rotation after the first two games, and went small by installing 6-foot-8 Nicolas Batum as his starting center in Game 4. Lue also restricted his original starting center, Ivica Zubac, to three minutes in Game 7 after Zubac had been repeatedly torched on defensive switches throughout the series by the Mavericks’ Luka Doncic.10,982The Clippers, who operated with the league’s smallest building capacity of the 16 teams that reached the first round of the playoffs, hosted a crowd of just 7,342 fans for their Game 7 win over Dallas. The Mavericks hosted the league’s biggest crowd of Round 1 for their Game 6 defeat on Friday night with a chance to close out the series: 18,324 fans (10,982 more than the Clippers).355The N.B.A. has announced that 355 players have applied for early entry into the N.B.A. draft. Only 60 players will be drafted on July 29.Hit me up anytime on Twitter (@TheSteinLine) or Facebook (@MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram (@thesteinline). Send any other feedback to marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. More

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      Lost Lead Reminds Mavericks Fans of 2006 Collapse

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      Fifteen years ago, the Mavericks lost the N.B.A. finals after winning the first two games of the series. Now they have blown a 2-0 lead over the Clippers.DALLAS — The Dallas Mavericks are one of only four teams to win the first two games in the N.B.A. finals and still lose the series. It was always assumed thereafter that, for this franchise and its fans, no playoff collapse could inflict as much pain as Dallas’s disintegration against the Miami Heat in 2006.Chances are the sentiment still applies, since a first-round series will never be confused with a championship series, but the Luka Doncic-led Mavericks are suddenly careening toward a doozy of an unraveling that might wind up in the same conversation.After seizing a 2-0 lead over the Los Angeles Clippers, with back-to-back road victories that had the league buzzing, Dallas welcomed crowds of nearly 18,000 fans on Friday night and Sunday night at American Airlines Center — and promptly disappointed them both.The series now resting at 2-2 is even worse than it sounds for the Mavericks, because they amassed a 30-11 lead in the first quarter of Game 3 that could have easily caused the Clippers, on the brink of a full-blown franchise crisis, to capsize. Two defeats later, and with Doncic clearly compromised by a neck strain he sustained during Game 3, Dallas has been forced to confront the painful reality that it actually squandered more than a 2-0 lead.“We’ve got to hope in the next couple of days that he can be better — hopefully substantially better,” Mavericks Coach Rick Carlisle said of Doncic’s health. “There’s a two-day break between games, which is a positive in this case.”An extra day off before Wednesday’s Game 5 back at Staples Center in Los Angeles was the lone positive Carlisle could realistically pinpoint.Fueled by Coach Tyronn Lue’s small-ball lineups, stout team defense in Sunday’s 106-81 rout in Game 4 and, most of all, relentless paint attacks from Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, the Clippers have mustered a show of unity and resolve that maybe no one in the N.B.A. outside of Lue expected.Leonard, in particular, has been as dominant as ever offensively in response to last week’s chatter about Doncic’s emergence as the best player in the series, averaging 33.0 points per game on ridiculous 62.7 percent shooting from the field.Mocking the Clippers’ moxie had evolved into a sport within the sport since their collapse against the Denver Nuggets in last summer’s bubble playoffs at Walt Disney World in Florida.On the brink of a Western Conference finals showdown with the Los Angeles Lakers, their storied Staples Center co-tenants, the Clippers went from a 3-1 cushion to a second-round exit by losing three consecutive games to Denver. Coach Doc Rivers was fired and the rigors stemming from the isolation of bubble life were blamed.But then the Clippers appeared to go out of their way to lose their final two games this season to lowly Houston and Oklahoma City, locking in the first-round matchup they preferred with Dallas and ensuring that they would avoid the Lakers until the conference finals.When Doncic and the Mavericks shredded the Clippers twice in Los Angeles to open the series, Lue and his players were lampooned for messing with basketball karma and, worse, reinforcing perceived frailties as a group that could potentially convince Leonard to leave the club in free agency this summer.Reggie Jackson, in the Clippers’s starting lineup for his ball-handling and shooting, scored 15 points in Game 4.Kevin Jairaj/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLue responded with his best work since his coaching contributions to the Cleveland Cavaliers’ historic comeback from a 3-1 deficit in the 2016 N.B.A. finals to Golden State.He made the 6-foot-8 Nicolas Batum his primary center in hopes of keeping more mobile players on the floor to cope with the brilliant Doncic, who averaged 38.0 points through the first games before his 9-for-24 shooting struggles and quiet 19 points on Sunday.Lue also made Reggie Jackson a starter in the backcourt for a boost in shooting and ball-handling and expanded roles for Rajon Rondo and Terance Mann, even though that meant relegating the boisterous Patrick Beverley, his original starter at point guard, out of the rotation.Lue admitted that the Clippers want to “try to wear Luka down” and “let him play one on one” by switching defenders on him constantly, and living with the results as long as they can “keep his assists down.”The smaller, quicker lineups likewise exacerbated the mobility issues that have plagued Dallas’ Kristaps Porzingis defensively since Porzingis, who tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee as a Knick in 2018, sustained a meniscus tear in his right knee in last season’s first-round series against the Clippers.“We still haven’t done anything yet,” Lue said.A reserved approach is wise in a series in which the home team has yet to win a game, and when Dallas is 3-0 on the Clippers’ floor this season. But there is a strong case to be made that the Mavericks won the first two games thanks as much to their unsustainable success from 3-point range as to the damage Doncic caused at full strength.The Mavericks shot 35-for-70 from deep in those two games, then cratered to 5-for-30 on 3-pointers in Game 4, with Doncic’s supporting cast fading badly, after wasting a 20-for-39 showing in Game 3.Carlisle said that, from his vantage point, Doncic’s injury left him unable to “turn his neck to the left.” That would help explain the lack of zip in his game and Doncic’s joyless expression from the start, with strips of black protective tape from the back of his neck and across his left shoulder protruding from his uniform.Doncic is shooting 40.6 percent from the free-throw line.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThere is another growing worry for the Mavericks on top of their star guard’s uncertain health: Doncic’s free-throw shooting. He shot 0-for-5 from the line in Sunday’s loss, taking the All-Star guard down to an indefensible 40.6 percent (13 for 32) for the series.“I don’t think that matters right now,” Doncic said of his injury. “I played terrible.”The Mavericks of 2005-6, who orbited around Dirk Nowitzki, avenged their finals collapse by beating Miami in the 2011 N.B.A. finals after the Heat had signed LeBron James and Chris Bosh to flank Dwyane Wade. Dallas, though, has not won a single playoff series since. These Mavericks came home after stunning the host Clippers twice, believing they had a shot at a sweep to end that drought, given the Clippers’ recent history of folding, and lost all the momentum.N.B.A. teams that lose the first two games at home in a best-of-seven series have rallied to win only four times in 31 tries.The Mavericks know how unlikely the feat is because they pulled it off it in the Nowitzki era in 2005, falling into a 2-0 hole before completing the comeback with a 40-point humiliation of the Houston Rockets in Game 7. Alas, in that series, Dallas had the luxury of playing the deciding game on its own floor after its dreadful start. The Clippers have reclaimed home-court advantage in this series and, more worryingly for Dallas, seem to be enjoying themselves for the first time in a long time after so much doomsday talk.George said he and Leonard did “an incredible job complementing each other” in Dallas and described the victories as two prime examples of “ultimately what we wanted to get to” as a partnership.“And, you know, it’s fun,” George said. More