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      N.B.A. Finals: Boston Celtics Take On Golden State Warriors

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      Golden State has been to the finals six times in eight years. But the young stars of the Celtics may finally be ready for their big moment.It would be Stephen Curry’s fourth N.B.A. championship, or Jayson Tatum’s first. It would be a comeback story for the ages for Klay Thompson, or a fairy-tale ending to the debut of the first-time head coach Ime Udoka.Much is at stake in the 2022 N.B.A. finals for Golden State and the Boston Celtics, two teams with something to prove. For Golden State, it’s a chance to defy the odds against reviving a dynasty after two seasons away from the spotlight. For Boston and its lineup of rising stars, this is, as they say, when legends are made.Here is a look at what to expect in the N.B.A. finals, which begin Thursday in San Francisco.Third-seeded Golden State has home-court advantage over second-seeded Boston because of its better regular-season record.Experience may not be everything.Golden State during the parade for its most recent championship, in 2018.Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated PressAfter the Boston Celtics won Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, their words about facing Golden State in the N.B.A. finals conveyed a blend of confidence and deference.“We know we’re going up against a great team with the Warriors. Great players, great organization,” Celtics guard Marcus Smart said. “They have the track record to prove it. They know exactly what it takes. They’ve been here. They’re vets. We know we’ve got a long road in front of us, but we’re up for the challenge.”These finals are marked by a gap in experience, with one team well seasoned in championship basketball and another filled with newcomers to this stage. Golden State has five players who have made multiple finals appearances — Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, Kevon Looney and Andre Iguodala. The Celtics have no players who have made it this far before now.Part of that is a function of age. Boston’s roster is filled with players in their 20s, while Golden State is a group of 30-somethings whose lives have changed since their first finals appearances.“Just being able to balance even just, like, family life,” Curry said after Game 5 of the Western Conference finals. “I’m blessed to have kids that are now 9, 6 and 3. Like, when I was back in ’14, ’15, chasing those playoffs, just a different vibe in terms of everything that’s going on in life.”Jayson Tatum, left, and Jaylen Brown, right are still finding themselves as the leaders of the Boston Celtics.Derick Hingle/Associated PressSmart was a 21-year-old rookie in 2015, the first time Curry, Green and Thompson won an N.B.A. championship. Jayson Tatum, who was named the Eastern Conference finals most valuable player this year, was in 11th grade. Their teammate Jaylen Brown had just finished high school and was headed to play college basketball at the University of California, Berkeley — just 11 miles from where Golden State played at the time.By the 2015 championship, with the exception of Looney, whom the Warriors drafted a few weeks after winning the title, Golden State’s return finals participants had all been through years of seasoning and early playoff exits.The 2021-22 Celtics have similarly spent the past few years learning how to win in the playoffs, and dealing with the bitterness of losing. Boston has been to the playoffs every year since 2015 and made it to the conference finals four times.But Golden State’s journey shows that finals experience isn’t everything.When the Warriors won the 2015 championship, they faced a Cleveland Cavaliers team led by LeBron James. James was making his fifth consecutive finals appearance and sixth overall. But he couldn’t stop Golden State from winning the series in six games.But James was also relatively new to that team. The depth of Golden State’s experience will help carry the team this month.Prediction: Golden State in six.Draymond Green is Golden State’s ‘emotional leader.’Draymond Green’s strength, and weakness, is his intensity.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesStephen Curry has famously drained more 3-pointers than anyone in history. Klay Thompson is still basking in his triumphant return from two cataclysmic injuries. And Jordan Poole, out of the morass of Golden State’s two seasons on dynastic hiatus, has emerged as one of the most dynamic young scorers in the league.As the Warriors return to the N.B.A. finals, several players have fueled their run. But is it possible amid all the team’s pyrotechnics that Draymond Green — the team’s highly opinionated, referee-tormenting spokesman — is somehow being overlooked? OK, maybe not. But in his 10th season, Green is making his sixth trip to the finals, and it is no coincidence. He is the defense-minded, pass-first force who binds his teammates in more ways than one.“Our emotional leader,” Coach Steve Kerr said.And Green has seldom, if ever, played better basketball than he has this postseason. In Golden State’s closeout win over the Dallas Mavericks in the Western Conference finals, he collected 17 points, 9 assists and 6 rebounds while shooting 6 of 7 from the field. He quarterbacked the offense. He was a menace on defense. He used up five of his six personal fouls.He also avoided partaking in many of the extracurriculars that had hampered him in the past — at least until after the game, when he spoke about facing the Celtics with a championship at stake. The problem was that the Celtics were still playing the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. In fact, the Heat would force a Game 7 before falling short. But in Green’s mind, he was never wrong.“I thought they were the better team, and clearly I wasn’t far off,” Green said this week on San Francisco’s KGMZ-FM, Golden State’s radio broadcast partner.In his own way, Green was a source of stability for the organization as the team labored with injuries in recent seasons. He mentored his younger teammates. He was in uniform when Curry and Thompson were absent. He acknowledged that it wasn’t always easy: He was accustomed to competing for championships, and suddenly Golden State had the worst record in the league.Now, back alongside Curry and Thompson, Green has another title in sight.“I can’t say that I thought coming into this season, like, ‘Yo, we’re going to win a championship,’ or, ‘We’re going to be in the N.B.A. finals,’ ” Green said. “But I always believed with us three that we have a chance.”Prediction: More rested and more experienced, Golden State wins the series in six games.They’re both great on defense, but different on offense.Celtics Coach Ime Udoka, left, helped Boston become the N.B.A.’s best defensive team. Marcus Smart, right, won the Defensive Player of the Year Award.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesThe connections between Celtics Coach Ime Udoka and Golden State Coach Steve Kerr — both former N.B.A. role players — are numerous. Both led their teams to the finals in their first seasons as a head coach, Kerr in 2014-15, when Golden State won the championship, and Udoka this year.They are also connected to San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich. Udoka was an assistant on the Spurs from 2012 to 2019, which resulted in a championship in 2014. Udoka also played three seasons for the Spurs, while Kerr played four seasons in San Antonio and won two championships. Both also worked with Popovich on the U.S. men’s national basketball team.Popovich’s influence is clear. Udoka and Kerr have preached the value of a staunch defense. Boston and Golden State were the two best defensive teams in the N.B.A. during the regular season. And like Popovich, the coaches are willing to bluntly criticize players publicly.Where they diverge is offensively.Udoka has installed a methodical, slower offense. The Celtics frequently run isolations, ranking near the top of the N.B.A. during the regular season, while Golden State was near the bottom.In part, that comes down to personnel: Boston’s two best players, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, are adept at getting to the rim and breaking defenses down one-on-one but less so at passing. In addition, the Celtics start Marcus Smart at point guard, and he isn’t a traditional pass-first guard.Kerr, meanwhile, has long preached an egalitarian offense hinging on ball movement — so much so that Kevin Durant, after leaving Golden State for the Nets in 2019, complained that Kerr’s offense had been limiting. This season, Golden State led the N.B.A. in scoring off cuts to the basket, while the Celtics were just around league average. Golden State also was second in the league in total passes.There’s another difference, too. Kerr is more willing to experiment with lineups. He has given significant minutes to rookies such as Moses Moody and Jonathan Kuminga, shuffling them in and out of the rotation. In the playoffs, Kerr gave the 19-year-old Kuminga three starts in the semifinal series against the Memphis Grizzlies. Moody, 20, was in the rotation against the Dallas Mavericks in the conference finals.Udoka has preferred to keep his rotations fairly predictable, particularly in the playoffs, rarely reaching down the Celtics’ bench even in the case of foul trouble.Prediction: Celtics in six. Their defense is well designed to chase Stephen Curry around. More

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      The Week When Sports Would Not Let America Look Away

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      As their games continued in the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, Golden State Coach Steve Kerr, the Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays made powerful statements against gun violence.Before the big N.B.A. game Tuesday night, there was no talk of basketball: only frustration, rage and pain.On Thursday, sports slid into the background once again, as was appropriate, replaced by heartbreaking facts, courtesy of two Major League Baseball teams, and calls to do something to end the carnage.Something is wrong in America. We can’t figure out how to stop aggression and death.The rampage killings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, have again shaken us to the core. We brace against the plague of gun violence that threatens every part of the country: grocery stores and churches, street corners and shopping centers, and schools filled with grade school children.Daily life feels at any moment like it could turn into horror.Amid all of this, our games go on. Important games featuring remarkable teams. The Golden State Warriors played their familiar brand of beautiful basketball in the conference finals of the N.B.A. playoffs. The Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, division rivals and contenders to win this year’s World Series, played a key series in St. Petersburg, Fla.Sports can be a tonic during hard times. Games and great performances offer a chance to wash away awful emotion. To move on and even forget. But hours after 19 students and two teachers were murdered in Uvalde, Steve Kerr, Golden State’s head coach, a man who knows firsthand the suffering caused by gun violence, would not let us turn from the agony completely.From Opinion: The Texas School ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.Michelle Goldberg: As we come to terms with yet another tragedy, the most common sentiment is a bitter acknowledgment that nothing is going to change.Nicholas Kristof, a former Times Opinion columnist: Gun policy is complicated and politically vexing, and it won’t make everyone safe. But it could reduce gun deaths.Roxane Gay: For all our cultural obsession with civility, there is nothing more uncivilized than the political establishment’s acceptance of the constancy of mass shootings.Jay Caspian Kang: By sharing memes with each new tragedy, we have created a museum of unbearable sorrow, increasingly dense with names and photos of the deceased.And the Yankees and Rays would soon come together in a way that demanded attention be paid to what matters — and what mattered most was not about wins or losses or the battle for first place in the American League East.In the minutes before Game 4 of his team’s playoff series, Kerr sat at a table before reporters and powerfully let loose. Nothing he said was scripted. Everything came from the heart, molded by personal experience. And it had nothing to do with basketball or sports.“In the last 10 days, we’ve had elderly Black people killed in Buffalo, Asian churchgoers killed in Southern California. And now we have children murdered at school,” Kerr said, his words forceful enough to go viral almost instantly. His voice quaked. His eyes narrowed with burning-ember emotion.He pounded the table, as his voice rose.“I’m fed up. I’ve had enough. We’re going to play the game tonight, but I want every person listening to this to think about your own child or grandchild or mother or father, sister, brother. How would you feel if this happened to you today?“When are we going to do something?” he added.“Enough!”Kerr has long spoken out in news conferences and other venues for stricter gun laws and against our society’s thirst for violence. He did so again this week, denouncing the politicians who do nothing and specifically railing against the Senate for not even passing legislation as simple as a requirement for universal background checks. In that moment, watching him was to watch a man struggling to make sense of a tragedy he is all too familiar with. In 1984, during Kerr’s freshman year at the University of Arizona, his father, Malcolm, was shot and killed by assassins outside his office at the American University in Beirut.With the dark cloud of wanton gun violence growing in America, don’t expect silence.Political statements are more rare in baseball, still nominally our national pastime though its dwindling audience has aged toward conservatism. Even the staid Yankees — so tradition-bound a team that they don’t even allow players to wear facial hair — and their division rival collaborated on a singular message. Instead of posting the usual stats and scoring updates during their game Thursday, both teams shared facts about gun violence to millions of followers.When they played on Thursday, their Twitter and Instagram posts focused entirely on the death toll of guns in this country.“58 percent of American adults or someone they cared for have experienced gun violence,” read one of the scores of posts.“This cannot become normal,” read another. “We cannot become numb. We cannot look the other way. We all know, if nothing changes, nothing changes.”Another: “Every day, more than 110 Americans are killed with guns, and more than 200 are shot and injured.”Jason Zillo, the Yankees’ vice president of communications, put the posts in perspective in a text message to my colleague David Waldstein this week. “As citizens of the world, it’s hard to process these shootings and just slip back into a regular routine,” Zillo said. “For one night, we wanted to reflect and draw attention to statistics that carry so much more significance and weight than batting average.”Well said. And well done.I’m one of the legions touched by gun violence: the suicide of a favorite great-uncle, the slaying of a distant cousin, an infant, by a stray bullet in a gang shootout. My pain swims in the same deep currents that swell across America. Together we grieve. Together we decide how to respond.This week, Steve Kerr, and the Yankees and Rays were there to remind us not to dive too deep into the easy distraction of sports — and that action is required to end this madness. More

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      Golden State Headed to NBA Finals After Beating Dallas Mavericks

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      Injuries helped end a streak of five straight finals runs, but Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green are back after beating the Dallas Mavericks in the West.SAN FRANCISCO — When the game ended and the celebration began, Klay Thompson’s emotions overtook him.He thought about the past three years of his life, the two serious leg injuries that required surgery, the days when he went to rehab even though he couldn’t bear it any longer. He thought about how this time last year he was just starting to jog again, and how his Warriors teammates sank to the worst record in the N.B.A. from the best in their conference while he couldn’t help. He thought about how lucky he was to have regained his explosiveness this season, how lucky he was to be able to play basketball for a living again.He thought about it all as he sat at the podium after the game, wearing a 2022 N.B.A. finals hat that bore Golden State’s logo and a T-shirt that said they were the Western Conference champions. He said it felt surreal.“I’m just grateful,” Thompson said.Golden State will return to the N.B.A. finals for the first time since 2019 after defeating the Dallas Mavericks, 120-110, in the Western Conference finals on Thursday.Golden State won the series with a victory in Game 5 behind 32 points from Thompson, and 10 points and 18 rebounds from Kevon Looney. They never trailed in the game, and staved off every Mavericks run.Klay Thompson missed two seasons with injuries, but had 32 points in Golden State’s Game 5 win over the Dallas Mavericks to advance to the N.B.A. finals.Cary Edmondson/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBecause of injuries, the Warriors had spent a couple of seasons wandering through the N.B.A. wilderness. But their celebrated core — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — is together again and playing some of its best basketball, no small achievement considering the team’s triumphant past.“We are all extremely proud of what it took to get back here,” Curry said. “Yeah, it’s definitely sweet based on what we went through.”Golden State won three championships and advanced to five straight finals from 2015 to 2019, before it all began to come unglued. While falling to the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 finals, Thompson tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee and Kevin Durant ruptured his right Achilles’ tendon.It would get worse. A few weeks later, Durant, who had helped Golden State win two championships, left for the Nets. Four games into the subsequent season, Curry broke his left hand. Golden State finished with the worst record in the league, a humbling blow for a franchise that had seemed on the cusp of establishing itself as a dynasty.Earlier this season, in a podcast interview with the former player JJ Redick, Green acknowledged his uncertainty about the future — both the team’s and his own — as Golden State labored through that listless 2019-20 season. Without Thompson, who spent much of his time rehabilitating away from the team, and Curry, who appeared in just five games, Green did little to hide his frustrations. He mentored some of the team’s younger players, but he also sulked and shot terribly.“I couldn’t get myself going,” Green told Redick. “It was never a point where I felt that my window was closing because of my skills or because of what I bring to the table. But if we’re going to suck like this every year, then my window is closed because I can’t get up for these meaningless games.”Thompson suffered another misfortune when he tore his right Achilles’ tendon in a private workout before the start of the 2020-21 season.“You go through one injury: ‘All right, cool. We’ll get our guy back. We’ll pick up where we left off,’” Green said. “Then you go through another one. When I say you go through another one, I mean, Klay. Then there it is, it’s two years off. You realize how fragile it is.”Draymond Green holding the Western Conference trophy. Green has won three championships with Golden State.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesBehind the scenes, though, Golden State’s decision makers were building toward a future — one they hoped would resemble the team’s not-so-distant past. In February 2020, General Manager Bob Myers traded for Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 draft pick in 2014, who had never quite fulfilled his seemingly vast potential with the Minnesota Timberwolves.With Golden State, Wiggins would prove he could do a bit of everything: shoot, pass, rebound, defend. On Monday, Kerr described the trade for Wiggins as “the key to all of this.” Golden State’s depth at the wing position had evaporated after the 2019 finals. Thompson was injured. Shaun Livingston had retired. And Andre Iguodala had been traded to the Memphis Grizzlies.“So the Wiggins trade allowed us to start to rebuild that wing defense,” Kerr said, “and Wiggs has just been so good. He’s gotten so much better over the last couple of years. He’s a perfect fit next to our guys.”Thompson said he told Wiggins after Thursday’s game how grateful he was to have him on the team.This season, Wiggins was a first-time All-Star as Golden State went 53-29, good for the third-best record in the West. There were other meaningful moments along the way. Curry broke the league record for career 3-pointers. Thompson, after 941 days away, made his long-anticipated return from injury, scoring 17 points — and even dunking — in a win against the Cleveland Cavaliers.But Golden State did not exactly race into the playoffs. It took time for Thompson to regain his familiar feel for the game, and Curry missed the final 12 games of the regular season with a sprained foot. Over one particularly lean stretch at the end of March, the Warriors lost seven of eight games. It was far from assured that they were capable of making a deep run in the playoffs.They needed just five games to eliminate the sixth-seeded Denver Nuggets in the first round, then six to take care of the second-seeded Grizzlies in the conference semifinals.The Mavericks, despite the best efforts of Luka Doncic, were little more than a speed bump.Dallas stole Game 4 of the series behind 30 points from Doncic, then Golden State returned home on Thursday to close out the series.“It’s a beautiful story,” Wiggins said.Andrew Wiggins’s defense on Luka Doncic throughout the series was a key factor in Golden State’s victories.Kelley L Cox/USA Today Sports, via ReutersKevon Looney, center, had 18 rebounds for Golden State in Game 5.Cary Edmondson/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe celebration began with about a minute and a half left in the game. Golden State took its starters out so the crowd could shower them with love. Curry sat on the bench looking almost like he couldn’t believe it, then the buzzer sounded and he jumped up and down waving a towel in the air.As streamers fell from the rafters, the Western Conference championship trophy was brought onto the court, along with the new Western Conference finals’ most valuable player trophy, which is named after Magic Johnson and was awarded to Curry. Thompson went around giving powerful hugs to his teammates. Green rushed into the stands with a stack of N.B.A. finals hats to give them to members of his family.After the trophy presentation on the court, Green walked toward the Warriors’ locker room yelling, “We back!”The core’s first playoff appearance together came in 2013, when they beat the Denver Nuggets in the first round before falling to the San Antonio Spurs in the second. They played in Oracle Arena in Oakland back then — all five of their prior finals series happened there.“It’s like kind of time stopped there where you kind of understand what real basketball is like in the playoffs,” Curry said. “We were pups at the time, but definitely great memories of playing in Oracle, the Warrior chants 25 minutes before a tipoff, the haze in the building, if you know what I mean.“To know where we’ve come from that year, everything that’s happened since — I can pretty much drop myself into any series and know what it felt like because we rely on those experiences so much.”Thompson remembers the 2013 playoffs well, too.“We were so young. We took an experienced and dynastic San Antonio team to a hard-fought series,” Thompson said. “After that I was like, gosh, we’re going toe-to-toe with Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. If we build on this, we could have a great future.”If someone had told him then that he would spend more than a decade with this team and that they would make six finals appearances together?“I would have never believed you,” Thompson said.Now, he wants more. More

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      Dallas Mavericks Save Season With Win Over Golden State

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      Dallas staved off elimination by Golden State behind Luka Doncic’s near triple-double. But the mass shooting in Uvalde loomed over the game.DALLAS — After a second-quarter stoppage in play, Luka Doncic of the Mavericks rose from one leg and tossed up a meaningless shot from beyond the 3-point line whose sole purpose seemed to be to entertain Doncic himself. It was a skyscraper, the ball hurtling toward the rafters before plummeting to Earth. It took one hard bounce off the court and then rattled through the hoop.As they waded into Tuesday’s playoff game against the Golden State Warriors, the Mavericks had to be wondering whether they could make shots with any consistency. Their season depended on it.While Doncic’s circus shot didn’t count, the degree of difficulty was outrageous. (Welcome to Luka’s World.) The crowd roared. And for a team on the ropes, it was a sign of good things to come.A major comeback can only begin with a modest first step, and Dallas is banking on the hope — however remote — that its 119-109 win over Golden State on Tuesday night in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals is a building block for a miracle.“We’re going to believe until the end,” said Doncic, who made several more conventional shots as the game moved along, finishing with 30 points, 14 rebounds and 9 assists. “We got more to do, you know. This is nothing.”You may have heard this before, but no team has overcome a three-games-to-none deficit in N.B.A. history. After avoiding elimination, Dallas, which now trails in the series, 3-1, wants to become the first. Game 5 is on Thursday in San Francisco.Stephen Curry led Golden State with 20 points but sat for most of the fourth quarter, with the game seemingly out of reach.Jerome Miron/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“We want to do something special,” the Mavericks’ Dorian Finney-Smith said. “It’s going to be very hard, but we can do it. We just got to stick together.”If nothing else, Tuesday’s win was a credit to the Mavericks and their resilient young core. They could have folded up for the season after polluting Game 3 with a buffet of ugly jump shots. In the loss, they went 13 of 45 from 3-point range. Reggie Bullock missed all 10 of his field-goal attempts.On Tuesday, the Mavericks shot 20 of 43 from 3-point range, assisted on 30 of their 41 field goals and unboxed a new-and-improved version of Bullock, who made 6 of his 10 3-point attempts.“It was almost like an ego win,” Golden State’s Stephen Curry said, referring to the Mavericks. “You come out and you really have nothing to lose, so that confidence started early. We didn’t really do nothing to slow it down, and that’s when the avalanche starts. So it’s a good lesson learned. You tip your hat to them because they made a lot of shots.”After scuffling through a couple of injury-marred, playoff-free seasons, Golden State remains one win from its first conference championship since 2019. But throughout the postseason, the team has faltered — at least momentarily — when it has come to eliminating its opponents.In the first round, the Denver Nuggets avoided a sweep by defeating Golden State in Game 4. In the conference semifinals, the Memphis Grizzlies prolonged their series with a 39-point win. For both the Nuggets and the Grizzlies, the reprieve was temporary: Golden State closed out each series in the subsequent game.The Mavericks present a different type of challenge. For long stretches of Tuesday’s game, Golden State went to a zone defense, which Dallas Coach Jason Kidd took as a compliment.“Because they can’t play us one-on-one,” he said.It was an odd game, both somber and then celebratory in its own muted way. It was played hours after at least 19 children and two adults were killed by a gunman at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, about 350 miles southwest of Dallas. At his pregame news conference, Golden State Coach Steve Kerr made an emotional plea for gun control legislation, while Kidd declined to answer questions about basketball.“We’re going to try to play the game,” Kidd said. “We have no choice.”Afterward, Kerr struggled to put the night into any sort of palatable context.“It’s too much to fathom, too much to comprehend,” he said. “We move on and we hope that someone actually decides to value our citizens’ lives more than they value money and power.”On a rainy evening, the start of the second half was delayed by leaks in the roof. By then, the Mavericks had a 15-point lead and were looking to build their momentum.It was not going to be easy: Golden State has a well-deserved reputation for pulverizing teams coming out of halftime. In fact, through the first three games of the series, the Warriors had outscored the Mavericks by a total of 31 points in the third quarter. Kidd was not overly concerned.“This group doesn’t let anything faze them,” he said.Sure enough, Dallas shot 8 of 13 from 3-point range in the third quarter to extend its lead to 29. Golden State made a late run with its reserves, but fell short.It is an obvious observation, but Doncic cannot do it alone — not against Golden State. He certainly tried to do his part in Game 2, when he scored 42, and in Game 3, when he scored 40. The Mavericks lost both.On Tuesday, he got help from lesser lights like Bullock and Finney-Smith, and even from Maxi Kleber, who came off the bench to snap his series-long nightmare by shooting 5 of 6 from the field.“If they make shots,” Doncic said, “I think it’s tough to beat us.”The Mavericks just need to do more of the same three more times. No circus shots required. More

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      The Dallas Mavericks Just May Not Be Good Enough Yet

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      With Golden State one win from the N.B.A. finals, Dallas is already talking about the off-season. Luka Doncic said he was “still learning.”DALLAS — Jason Kidd, the coach of the Mavericks, had a concise message for his players before Game 3 of the N.B.A.’s Western Conference finals on Sunday night.Open shots, he reminded them in the locker room, are easier to make than contested shots, so get into the paint and draw Golden State defenders. Do that, and space will open up on the perimeter.“Attack, attack, attack,” said Kidd, his voice betraying no small amount of urgency. “Make them work.”It was a smart strategy, and sure enough, it worked. The Mavericks generated a respectable number of clean looks at 3-pointers. The problem? They couldn’t make many of them. Luka Doncic, the team’s star point guard, offered a synopsis.“Sometimes you feel like you’re open and everybody knows you can make a shot, and then just miss,” he said. “It gets you quite a little bit down.”It was the latest installment of a series-long nightmare for the Mavericks, whose 109-100 loss put them on the brink of elimination. Golden State can complete a four-game sweep on Tuesday, and if that isn’t dire enough for Dallas, there is also this heavily recited piece of trivia: No team in league history has come back from the three-games-to-none series deficit the Mavericks are facing.“It’s not over yet,” Doncic said, “but it’s not going to be easy.”Not against an opponent that Kidd described as a “dynasty.” Not against the likes of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, together again after wading through two injury-ravaged seasons to lead the Warriors to the cusp of their first N.B.A. finals appearance since 2019.But Golden State is also a potent blend of new and old. For a stretch of the third quarter, the Warriors went with a box-and-1 defense as Moses Moody, the first-year guard, defended Doncic after receiving guidance from Green. In the fourth quarter, Andrew Wiggins, who has been playing his finest basketball since joining the team in 2020, nearly dunked Doncic into oblivion.“That was impressive,” Doncic said, “I’m not going to lie.”And Jordan Poole, the third-year guard who took advantage of the team’s lean seasons to develop into an explosive playmaker, sealed the win with a late-game 3-pointer.“They just stay connected throughout the entire game, whether they’re down 20 or up 20,” the Mavericks’ Jalen Brunson said. “You can see that. It’s just very evident.”Jalen Brunson, center, has been one of Dallas’s best performers in the playoffs. He had 20 points on 7 of 12 shooting on Sunday.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesIt must be small consolation for them right now, but the Mavericks are learning some valuable lessons — many of the same lessons that the Memphis Grizzlies learned in the last round when they succumbed to Golden State’s experience and wisdom and all-around cohesive play. While Kidd stopped short of conceding the series, he acknowledged as much.“As we reflect this summer, whenever that starts, we’ll understand what we did and how we can get better,” he said. “We’re going to keep fighting, but we’re also going to get better from this experience.”Give the Mavericks credit for trying to adjust their approach after blowing a 19-point lead in Game 2.That adjustment was on display early in the second quarter of Game 3, as the Mavericks — once, twice, three times — penetrated into the paint, continually sending passes to the perimeter in search of a quality shot. It was only when they dribbled into the teeth of the defense for a fourth time that Dorian Finney-Smith spotted Brunson behind the 3-point line. He drained the shot.Later in the quarter, Brunson repaid the favor when he picked up his dribble near the left elbow. As a slew of Golden State defenders converged on him, Brunson whipped the ball to Finney-Smith for another 3-pointer, which pushed Dallas’s lead to 6.But that was as good as it got for the Mavericks, who were otherwise woeful from the 3-point line, shooting 13 of 45. Reggie Bullock missed all seven of his 3-point attempts. Maxi Kleber was 0 for 5.“We just didn’t shoot the ball well,” Kidd said. “We’re getting good looks, and they’re just not dropping.”There were other problems. One of them was named Stephen Curry, who collected 31 points and 11 assists while shooting 5 of 10 from 3-point range. The Mavericks also gave up too many offensive rebounds, and they wasted another valiant effort from Doncic. After scoring 42 points on Friday, he went for 40 on Sunday. The Mavericks lost both games.“I’m still learning,” he said.Stephen Curry had 31 points — including five 3-pointers — in Golden State’s win.Tom Pennington/Getty ImagesIf nothing else, the Mavericks are going to win or lose by being themselves — and unapologetically so. There is no greater illustration of this phenomenon than the behavior of their players on the bench, who have been treading a fine line between enthusiastic and obnoxious. They cheer. They dance. But they also stand precariously close to the court, which has caused issues.On Friday, for example, Curry threw a pass to an open player who was calling for the ball. The problem was that the open player was Theo Pinson, an inactive player for the Mavericks. Curry had mistaken Pinson’s white shirt for a Golden State jersey.“It was a good pass,” Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said, deadpan. “He was open.”The league subsequently fined the Mavericks $100,000 for continuing to violate league rules regarding “team bench decorum.” On multiple occasions, the league said in a statement, players and at least one member of the coaching staff had encroached on the playing surface. It was the third time the league had fined the Mavericks in the postseason for the extracurriculars of their bench.“We’re not going to sit,” Kidd said before Game 3. “We’re going to cheer.”By the end of night, Golden State had rendered them silent. More

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      Kevon Looney Leads Golden State in Comeback Win Over Dallas Mavericks

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      Looney had the best night of his career to fuel his team’s comeback from 19 points down to the Dallas Mavericks in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.SAN FRANCISCO — The day before Kevon Looney produced the best game of his professional career, he sat in a hallway at Chase Center in San Francisco, thinking about the way his role had changed since Golden State drafted him in 2015.This was a team known for its smaller lineups; that’s how it had won a championship that year. At 6-foot-9, and despite a wingspan of more than seven feet, Looney was considered undersized.Looney chuckled at the thought, then he considered it a little bit more.“The league’s kind of changed, and now I’m more the traditional center now in the N.B.A.,” Looney said, as he thought about the way people sometimes talk about Golden State. “So it kind of is weird to me. Sometimes it feels like a slap in the face when they’re like, ‘They don’t have any size.”Looney typically is not the most talked-about member of the Warriors. He was drafted less than two weeks after Golden State won its first championship with Steve Kerr as coach, and was part of the team for four consecutive appearances in the N.B.A. finals and two championships. After overcoming early injury woes, he became a critical part of Golden State’s roster, and this year was one of only five players leaguewide to play in all 82 regular-season games.In the playoffs this year, Golden State has been able to count on him. He didn’t start in Games 1 through 5 of their Western Conference semifinal series against the Memphis Grizzlies, then started and grabbed 22 rebounds in the Game 6 win that clinched the series.Golden State turned to Looney in Game 6 of its series against the Grizzlies, and his play was crucial. He grabbed 22 rebounds in the win.Ezra Shaw/Getty ImagesOn Friday night in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals series against the Dallas Mavericks, Looney scored 21 points with 12 rebounds in the 126-117 comeback win. It was the first time since his only season at U.C.L.A. that he had scored more than 20 points in a game. It was also the first time a Warriors center had scored 20 points with at least 10 rebounds in the playoffs since 1977.“We see the work that he’s put in to make that a reality,” Golden State guard Stephen Curry said. “Now, in the playoffs, just taking that next step. He brings a lot of joy to what we do in the locker room. I’ll call him, like, the muse in the locker room. He kind of just has a great demeanor about him. He’s the bridge between the vets and the young guys. Pretty awesome to see him adapt to that role.”Kerr called Looney “everybody’s favorite guy.”Forward Draymond Green called him a master of professionalism.“The same professional he is today, he was when he came in the league,” Green said.Looney may have projected professionalism and levelheadedness to Green, but the truth was that when Looney was drafted, he was a wide-eyed 19-year-old just trying not to break anything.This team was riding high after its championship, and his job was to fit in, not to stand out. As the only rookie, he didn’t have anyone with common experiences to talk to about what that was like and what he should do.“Definitely was intimidating,” Looney said.That July, he was in Las Vegas after playing in the N.B.A.’s Summer League tournament, where teams field rosters of their young players and N.B.A. hopefuls. The veterans on his team were in Las Vegas for a players’ union awards show, and one night Andre Iguodala texted, asking him to bring over some doughnuts.“It’s like 1 in the morning,” Looney said, laughing. “I didn’t even know if he was serious. First day, I’m already scared. I don’t want to mess up on my first day.”He attended the awards show, but when the team went up onstage together, he said he was too shy to join them. That shyness persisted during the early part of the season as the team went 24-0 on its way to an N.B.A.-record 73 wins.“They used to joke that I didn’t talk for the first six months,” Looney said.In addition to requesting doughnut deliveries at 1 a.m., Iguodala took Looney under his wing and helped him adapt. Green would invite Looney to spend time with him just to make him feel more comfortable in this new setting.That helped in the locker room, but Looney would experience other challenges. He had hip surgery before his rookie year began. Then he had another hip injury in his second season.Looney had never missed a game in college or high school, and called the injuries “devastating.”“We didn’t know what we had,” Kerr said, noting that the team did not pick up Looney’s contract option for a fourth season because he had not played much. He continued: “And then his third year he has a great year, it’s like, uh oh, we might lose this guy.”Looney is relishing the chance to have an impact during the playoffs. He had 10 points, 5 rebounds and 4 assists in Game 1 against Dallas, also a Golden State victory.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLooney was keenly aware of the questions the organization had about him, but he took solace in the support from his teammates.“Always got the respect from my teammates, and that made me keep going, that made me feel good about myself and know that I’m doing the right thing,” Looney said. “Even if the fans — you might have a bad game, the fans might say you’re not good enough, somebody might say you’re not good enough — but when you’ve got your teammates saying, like, ‘Man I don’t care what the stat lines say, I want to be out there with Loon,’ it’s a great honor.”Looney was inactive throughout the playoffs for his first two seasons. But in his third season, he began to have a significant role for the Warriors and contributed to their 2017-18 championship run. He often defended the best players.Now 26, he’s a veteran on a team that has incorporated young guys who are experiencing their first playoff runs. Looney knows what that felt like and tries to help guide them through the process.And if Golden State wins another championship this year, it will feel a little bit more special, given his contributions.“To make an impact, and start a lot of these games, playoff games, be there for the team, have some big roles in playoff moments, this’ll mean a lot to me,” Looney said. “It’ll just be kind of like the cherry on top to be able to close it out and win and be there for my team.” More

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      Golden State’s Andrew Wiggins Isn’t the Bust You Thought He Was

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      Wiggins, the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2014, had developed a reputation as a bust. Coming to Golden State has helped him finally tap his potential.SAN FRANCISCO — Reputations tend to stick if they ring true and, for a while, Andrew Wiggins’s reputation in the N.B.A. was that he was a bust.For years, the word on Wiggins, a former No. 1 pick, was that he was inconsistent. That he was bad at defense. That he didn’t care.The Cleveland Cavaliers had drafted him first overall in 2014 but traded him to the Minnesota Timberwolves less than two months later. More than five seasons in Minnesota bore little fruit, and after the Timberwolves went to the playoffs only once during that period they sent Wiggins to Golden State.His latest stop, though, has changed things for Wiggins. Wednesday night offered one more example of his progression.Golden State made a statement in the opening game of the Western Conference finals, leading the Dallas Mavericks by 30 points in the fourth quarter and winning, 112-87. Golden State’s point total wasn’t exceptionally high, but its defense propelled its victory.Wiggins was a big part of that. The Warriors asked Wiggins to be their primary defender on the All-Star guard Luka Doncic, and Wiggins made sure Doncic didn’t hurt Golden State in the way he had hurt the Mavericks’ previous playoff opponents.“That’s why he was the No. 1 pick,” Golden State’s Klay Thompson said of Wiggins. “You can’t teach that athleticism. You can’t teach that length. You can’t teach his timing. I’m just happy the world is getting to see who he really is.”Wiggins 8 of 17 from the field on Wednesday, including three 3-pointers.Thearon W. Henderson/Getty ImagesDoncic finished the game with 20 points, only one more than Wiggins and only 2 of them after the first half. He also committed seven turnovers and had only four assists. Doncic suggested after the game that an achy shoulder had played a role in his performance, saying it was causing him pain when he shot the ball, but added that he would be fine with some treatment.But part of Golden State’s plan was to wear him out, and it was Wiggins’s job to do it.“He took the challenge, and Luka’s tough,” Warriors guard Stephen Curry said. “He still finds a way to control possessions. You’ve got to assume he’ll shoot a little bit better, but Wiggs was relentless. Every possession, he was out there on him. That’s all we really want. Even if Luka has his numbers, you just want to, at the end of the day, feel like he had to work for everything he got.”On Most possessions, Wiggins would start guarding Doncic in the backcourt, not allowing him to easily bring the ball up the court. Asked after the game if that all-court effort had tired him out, Wiggins shrugged and offered a half smile.“I feel like I’m still young,” said Wiggins, who is 27. “I don’t really get too tired. I’m locked in. I’m motivated. And when you see it work or I feel like it’s helping us play better, it just motivates me to do it more.”Said Thompson: “He just doesn’t seem to get tired.”Thompson appreciated the effort more than most: the way Wiggins has been playing, he said, took some pressure off him.“I don’t have to check the best player every night again,” said Thompson, who was known for his defense before missing the past two seasons with leg injuries. “Especially after what I’ve been through, it’s a nice change of pace.”The 87 points the Mavericks scored were the lowest opponent total against Golden State this postseason. The Warriors have held opponents below 100 points three other times during the playoffs this year; each time, they have won.The Mavericks had great success from 3-point range in earlier rounds, but made only 3 of 19 3-pointers in the first quarter Wednesday, and finished the game 11 for 48 from behind the arc. Those misses came from throughout their roster — it wasn’t only Doncic who struggled offensively. But Doncic is the player who drives the Mavericks, so his struggles loom larger.After the final buzzer, Doncic let out a long exhale as he walked through the tunnel toward the visiting locker room at Chase Center. He wore a T-shirt over his uniform because he hadn’t played the final five minutes; by then, the game was too far out of hand for playing him to be worth the risk. His face was marked by an inadvertent red scratch from Wiggins, several inches long, from the right side of his nose down his cheek.The Mavericks have a habit of losing big and recovering. They lost to the Phoenix Suns by 30 points in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals before beating them by 27 in Game 6 and by 33 in Game 7. Several Mavericks players on Wednesday spoke after the game about expecting a much better performance from Doncic during Game 2 on Friday.“We’re under no illusion we’ve figured anything out,” Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said.What they have figured out, and are glad others are seeing now, is that Wiggins has tapped into a part of his potential that might have been dormant, or at least less obvious in previous seasons.Thompson said being with Golden State has allowed Wiggins to be himself. Curry said he’s learning how to win.Wiggins said the winning culture of Golden State cultivated by players like Stephen Curry, center, has helped him “see a different side of the game.”Harry How/Getty Images“Wiggs is understanding the nuances of what winning basketball is and just how to key in on the little things in terms of consistent effort from the defense, taking those one-on-one challenges, being aggressive on the offensive end, using his athletic ability to get to the rim if he needs to, confidence shooting the 3; being comfortable in our offense,” Curry said. “So there’s a lot of different things that he’s understanding that this time, in terms of a playoff run, requires to win games and the joy that comes with it.”Wiggins passed the credit for that right back to Curry, Thompson and Draymond Green, who all won three championships and went to five straight N.B.A. finals together.“It helps me see a different side of the game,” Wiggins said. “Being here, the culture, the people, organization, most importantly, just being around winners.”A winner was not a label attached to Wiggins much at the start of his career, but during these playoffs he has showed more and more that it fits. 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      Ja Morant’s Injury Isn’t the Only Problem for the Grizzlies

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      A young Memphis team is getting a crash course in high-stakes basketball from championship-tested Golden State.Dillon Brooks of the Memphis Grizzlies returned from his one-game suspension determined to leave an imprint on his team’s Western Conference semifinal series with the Golden State Warriors. He was going to make things happen Monday night in Game 4. Unfortunately for the Grizzlies, his imprint largely entailed chucking errant 3-pointers off the back of the rim and dribbling the ball off his foot.Brooks is (typically) one of the better players on one of the N.B.A.’s most exciting young teams, but there is no substitute for postseason experience. The Grizzlies are getting some, and it will pay off for them in the future, but the future is not now. Their championship-tested opponent is making sure of that.On Monday, the Grizzlies had every opportunity to even the best-of-seven series at two games apiece — in San Francisco, no less. But they were trailing by 3 points when Brooks ceded the spotlight to Jaren Jackson Jr., a teammate who had plenty of time — about 15 seconds remained in the game — to exercise patience. Instead, Jackson launched a 3-pointer with three defenders in his vicinity. Golden State’s Draymond Green got a hand on the ball, and Jackson missed.“We rushed a couple of plays there,” Memphis Coach Taylor Jenkins said after his team’s 101-98 loss. “We’ve just got to learn from it and get better for the next game.”Golden State was losing for almost the entire game Monday, but came out on top when it mattered: in the end.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAhead of Game 5 on Wednesday, the Grizzlies are coping with yet another new experience: the possibility of elimination. They trail in the series, 3-1, after Ja Morant, their All-Star point guard, missed Monday’s loss with right knee soreness. On Tuesday, the Grizzlies announced that Morant was doubtful for the rest of the postseason after testing revealed he had a bone bruise. It is looking bleak for them.Against a lesser opponent, perhaps the Grizzlies could have more easily overcome their youthful exuberance — combined now with Morant’s absence. The Warriors are not a lesser opponent. They proved as much in Game 4, even after they missed their first 15 3-point attempts, and even after they scored just 38 points in the first half, and even after they trailed by as many as 12.“Gutted it out,” said Stephen Curry, who recalled his impassioned exchange with Green after Green disrupted Jackson’s shot in the final minute. “Something to the effect of, ‘That’s what you do.’ Every opportunity we have to appreciate his greatness on that end of the floor, especially at this stage, that’s what it’s all about.”Not so long ago, there was an expectation that the series would offer up some 21st century basketball at its finest. Here were two teams capable of filling box scores with offensive fireworks.Beyond that, the series seemed like it had the potential to shape up as a delightfully entertaining generational skirmish. The Grizzlies, behind Morant, were the new kids on the block, contenders ahead of schedule. Golden State, of course, had reassembled its core after two injury-marred seasons.Both teams have increased the intensity and physicality during the series.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe series, then, was supposed to be an aesthete’s treat, crammed with soaring dunks and deep 3-pointers and mutual respect. Instead, through four games, it has been more Royal Rumble than Alvin Ailey. Green was ejected for committing a flagrant foul in Game 1. Golden State’s Gary Payton II fractured his elbow in Game 2 after Brooks clubbed him across the head as Payton went up for a layup. And after limping off the court in Game 3, Morant took to social media to accuse Golden State’s Jordan Poole of making a dirty play of his own.About an hour before the start of Game 4, a disjointed series got even stranger when Golden State announced that Steve Kerr would not be available to coach because he had entered the league’s coronavirus health and safety protocols. Instead, Mike Brown, one of his assistants, would call the shots. The oddest part of all? Earlier in the day, the Sacramento Kings had named Brown as their new head coach. (He will remain with Golden State for the duration of the postseason.)Kerr’s absence added to the series’ sense of attrition. Payton could be gone for the rest of the postseason. Morant was sitting behind the Grizzlies’ bench in a sweatshirt. And now Kerr had to watch the game from home, part of a television-viewing audience that settled in for an evening of cornea-wrenching theater.Golden State has a well-deserved reputation for playing a refined brand of basketball. But this is a team that can also win ugly, no small asset in the postseason.“We’ve been here before, and we know how to pull off games like this,” Curry said.Without Morant, Memphis wanted to muck it up. After supplying limited minutes in recent weeks, Steven Adams started at center and was solid, finishing with 10 points and 15 rebounds. The problem was everyone else. Brooks shot 5 of 19 from the field. Kyle Anderson went 2 of 7 from the free-throw line. And Jackson missed all seven of his 3-point attempts.“It’s tough when that happens,” he said. “I wanted more of myself than that.”The question is whether Memphis has much more to give. What these young Grizzlies seem to need is a postseason cram session — a rapid infusion of the secrets to winning high-stakes games. They won a lot during the regular season, ending with the second-best record in the N.B.A. But winning when each game is emotional, when critical foul calls won’t go their way, when the defense makes easy shots difficult and difficult shots impossible, when free throws don’t feel so free? It can take years to learn all of that, and many players never do. The Grizzlies may have to try to play as though they have — without their best player.Morant has not been immune to knee issues. In November, during a torrid start to the regular season, he sprained his left knee and then entered the league’s health and safety protocols, missing 12 games. He missed several more games toward the end of the regular season with knee soreness.Still, Adams said the team was capable of making fixes for Game 5, fixes that he said were both “simple” and “reassuring.” And what were they?“I can’t disclose that information, mate,” he said. “Keep it under wraps. But it’s not a complicated thing. It’s not something that we can’t do. Put it that way.”Memphis still has time to figure it out. But not much, especially against Golden State. More