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      Video of Draymond Green Punching Jordan Poole at Practice Goes Viral

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      Green, known as a fierce player, turned on teammate Jordan Poole during a practice and ended up in a viral video.Draymond Green, part of Golden State’s championship core, roams the basketball court with the energy of a lit fuse.But his intensity has also caused problems. On Friday, TMZ posted a video of Green punching Jordan Poole, one of his teammates, at a practice this week.Bob Myers, Golden State’s general manager, acknowledged that there had been an “altercation” between the two players when he spoke at a news conference Thursday, adding that any disciplinary action against Green would be handled internally.“Look, it’s the N.B.A.,” Myers said. “It’s professional sports. These things happen. Nobody likes it. We don’t condone it. But it happened.”A spokesman for the team said Golden State was investigating how the video got to TMZ.Green subsequently apologized in a team meeting that included the players and the coaching staff, Myers said. Green did not practice with the team on Thursday.Golden State opened its preseason by traveling to Japan for two games against the Washington Wizards. The Warriors are scheduled to host the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday.“I’ve actually seen a really good group,” Myers said. “For the people who went to Japan with us, it’s actually one of the best vibes we’ve had in my 12 years here as far as camp and health and mental health and camaraderie. But it’s unfortunate, and I’m not going to deny it. It’ll take some time to move through it, but we’ll move through it and move forward and I’m confident that we will.”Green, battling Denver Nuggets guard Monte Morris for the ball in April, has said he knows only how to play aggressively.Ron Chenoy/USA Today Sports, via ReutersGreen, 32, is a four-time All-Star and one of the N.B.A.’s more polarizing figures. A 6-foot-6 forward, he is a ferocious defender with unique passing abilities for someone his size. He also screams at referees, taunts opposing fans and collects technical fouls like they are baseball cards.Green, who has spent his entire career with Golden State, has often said that he knows how to play only one way — with force, by pushing acceptable limits. That was certainly the case in June, when he tussled with various Boston Celtics in the N.B.A. finals. By the end of the series, Green was a champion for the fourth time.At times, Green’s aggressiveness has caused issues. Most famously, he was suspended for Game 5 of the 2016 N.B.A. finals after he collected too many flagrant fouls. (The last straw was striking LeBron James in the groin.) Golden State lost that game and then the next two as the Cleveland Cavaliers came back to win their first and only championship.In November 2018, he had a well-publicized squabble with Kevin Durant, who was then one of his teammates, that led to Green’s being suspended for a game. During a game the following March, Coach Steve Kerr was filmed in a candid moment telling one of his assistants that he was tired of Green’s antics.Poole, a 23-year-old shooting guard, was one of Golden State’s breakout stars last season, averaging a career-best 18.5 points a game while emerging as a multidimensional scoring threat next to Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. Poole is in the final season of his rookie contract and is in line for a huge extension.In the video posted by TMZ, Green appears to approach Poole on one of the baselines at Wednesday’s practice before going chest-to-chest with him. Poole pushes Green, who responds by punching Poole in the face and knocking him to the ground. Several others rush in to break it up. There is no audio.“It’s a situation that could’ve been avoided,” Curry told reporters Thursday. “But there’s a lot of trust in the fabric of our team, who we are, who we know those two guys to be and how we’ll get through it and try to continue to make it about playing great basketball.”During his N.B.A. playing career, Kerr was involved in a notable fracas of his own. In a heated practice with the Chicago Bulls before the start of the 1995-96 season, Michael Jordan punched him in the face.The fight was recounted in “The Last Dance,” an ESPN documentary series about the Jordan-era Bulls. Kerr said in the documentary that standing up to Jordan was probably “the best thing that I ever did.”“From that point on, our relationship dramatically improved and our trust in each other, everything,” Kerr said. “It was like, ‘All right, we got that out of the way. We’re going to war together.’”The Bulls went on to win the N.B.A. championship after setting a regular-season record with 72 wins.At a news conference on Thursday, Kerr declined to comment when asked about his fight with Jordan.“We had a documentary about that,” he said. “Watch ‘The Last Dance.’” More

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      in Basket

      Praying the Lakers Regain a Starring Role in the N.B.A. Playoffs

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      This postseason, the only reminders of the Los Angeles Lakers’ luster appear on a fictionalized cable series and streaming documentaries.Dear God of Sports,This prayer comes in the name of N.B.A. healing and restoration.The playoffs are happening now, blessed with tension and talent. What a spectacle. Thank you for the young among us, beginning with Ja Morant and Jordan Poole. Make safe the health of the great, grizzled Noah known as Chris Paul.The vigor you have again bestowed upon the Boston Celtics is beauty to behold.But something is missing: the Los Angeles Lakers. Any postseason without the Lakers feels like a breach of a cosmic bond.For all to be right in the Kingdom of Hoops, the Lakers must be a fixture in the playoff firmament; same as they were in all but five seasons from their birth in the late 1940s until 2014, when Kobe Bryant (may he and his beloved rest easy) began edging toward retirement.The Lakers are cherished and hated like no other team. They bestow extra attention, vibe and legitimacy upon the postseason. Nothing is the same without them in the mix.Great Spirit of Sports, the Lakers now wander in the desert. With this season’s epic collapse, they have failed to reach the postseason in seven of the last nine years. Yes, they reached the highest of heights in 2020. But that season’s N.B.A. championship finished inside a pandemic bubble. Two years ago now seems like 20. Today, the journey to that title is a parable few remember. Was it just a dream?Basketball fans have been forsaken. A generation walks in the wilderness, having never seen a powerful Lakers team challenge Steph Curry and Golden State with everything on the line.But you never let us down, God of Sports. Amid the playoffs, you have sprinkled reminders of Lakers luster for all to see — at least those of us who subscribe to HBO Max and Apple TV+.Two years removed from winning an N.B.A. championship, the Lakers missed the playoffs this season.Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports, via ReutersLast week came the unveiling on Apple TV+ of the documentary “They Call Me Magic.”Please allow for good reviews.Heal the hearts of the Lakers family, who now live in distress over another recent depiction, the HBO series “Winning Time.” It is classic Hollywood: a glitzy blend of fact, fiction and glammed-up dramatic license that focuses on the team’s 1980s Showtime era. All that off-court excess, all that soap opera intrigue, along with those five league titles.That series has caused hurt feelings and bruised pride to consume Lakersland.Jerry West demanded a retraction and an apology from HBO over the overheated, fictive way he is depicted.Kareem Abdul-Jabbar called the series a deliberately dishonest rendering, “with characters who are stick-figure representations that resemble real people the way Lego Han Solo resembles Harrison Ford.”Magic Johnson, the show’s centerpiece, the Showtime era’s North Star, said he had not seen the series and that it did not tell the truth. Confusing, I know.Lord of Hoops, Great Giver of the Three-Point Shot, far be it from me to tell these basketball legends that their anger is misplaced. But ease their troubles. Remind them that few will watch a series like “Winning Time” in these discordant days without being in on the joke.Help them see the irony: The Lakers’ iconic modern image was built in part on Hollywood smoke and mirrors. On the cloaking and twisting of reality. Indeed, on magic.The Lakers of the 1980s were more than just a team that won five championships in a decade. Their uniqueness came not just from those titles but from the power of make-believe — the Forum Club, the Lakers Girls, the age-defying movie stars in every other seat.Remind aggrieved Lakers of their team’s twists of narrative. Their storied rise in the 1980s was cast as villains to the Boston Celtics and drawn in simple strokes: the cool, Black team standing in the path of the stodgy, white one.Yes, Boston had Larry Bird and other white stars, but it also had Black Celtics like Dennis Johnson, Robert Parish and Cedric Maxwell — legends in their own right.And which team had a Black head coach? The Celtics, led by K.C. Jones for two of their three N.B.A. crowns that decade.In the longtime telling of this duel, the city of Boston has often been projected as mired in racism. But simple stories, as you well know, sometimes mask the complicated truth. Los Angeles has always had plenty of its own problems with race.Injustice exists everywhere. Greatness is a rarer thing. The greatness of 17 N.B.A. championships ground the Lakers, even though mythology has always been a part of their story.Oh mighty one, in the name of St. Elgin, lessen the burden of former Lakers who feel wronged.Then turn back to the hardwood.Restore LeBron James, his creaky knees and 37-year-old back.Remind him that all good things come in due time — so long as due time starts next season. The entertainment empire he is building in Los Angeles is something to behold. But being a movie mogul and community force flows first from the river of N.B.A. championships.Consider purgatory for the front office executives who signed Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony and the other elder-Lakers before this season.When you finish replenishing Hollywood’s team, would you mind granting an even bigger miracle to another basketball calamity?God of Sports, remember the Knicks? More

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      in Tennis

      Bob Falkenburg, Tennis Hall of Famer Turned Entrepreneur, Dies at 95

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      He won at Wimbledon in 1948 and took some doubles titles before decamping to Brazil and founding a fast-food chain.Bob Falkenburg, the Tennis Hall of Famer who captured the 1948 Wimbledon singles championship in a thrilling fifth-set comeback and also won a pair of Grand Slam men’s doubles titles, then forged a second career as a businessman who introduced fast food outlets to South America, died on Thursday at his home in Santa Ynez, Calif. He was 95.His death was confirmed to The Associated Press by his daughter Claudia.Falkenburg was ranked among the nation’s top 10 tennis players at age 17 and remained in that elite category for the next five years.His signature achievement came at Wimbledon in 1948, when he was down three match points facing John Bromwich of Australia. Relying on powerful backhands and a strong serve, he came back to win his only major singles championship. A year later, Falkenburg won the first two sets facing Bromwich in the Wimbledon quarterfinals, but Bromwich won the last three.Falkenburg teamed with Don McNeill as men’s doubles champions at the U.S. Nationals at Forest Hills in 1944 and with Jack Kramer in the Wimbledon doubles in 1947.The International Tennis Hall of Fame, which inducted Falkenburg in 1974, called him “a thinking man’s player, one who took calculated risks when others might play it safe.”“He was confident that his big booming serve wouldn’t fail him and that his forays to net would lead to winners,” it said.Falkenburg’s brother, Tom, and his sister, Jinx Falkenburg, competed in the U.S. Nationals. But Jinx was best known for her career in show business. She was a model and movie actress, then joined with her husband and manager, Tex McCrary, on the popular radio and early TV breakfast chat program “Tex and Jinx.”Falkenburg entered his last Grand Slam tournament in 1955 after moving to Brazil with his wife, Lourdes Mayrink Veiga Machado, a Brazilian native, whom he married in 1947. He played for Brazil in the 1954 and 1955 Davis Cups.According to the Tennis Hall of Fame, Falkenburg once remembered how on one of his trips from the United States to Brazil he was “distressed that I couldn’t get a decent hamburger or milkshake.”He founded South America’s first fast food and ice cream outlets in 1952 in the Copacabana neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, calling them Bob’s. His mini-chain consisted of about a dozen outlets when the Falkenburgs, having moved back to Southern California in 1970, sold Bob’s to Nestlé’s Libby operation in 1974. Bob’s has had several ownerships since then and has expanded to more than 1,000 outlets in Brazil and beyond South America as well.Robert Falkenburg was born on Jan. 29, 1926, in Manhattan and grew up in Los Angeles. His father, Eugene, an engineer, and his mother, Marguerite (Crooks) Falkenburg, played in amateur tennis events, and Bob began wielding a racket at private clubs when he was 10 years old.He won a junior tennis tournament to the Bel-Air Country Club in 1937 and, while at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, won the U.S. Interscholastic singles title in 1942; he also teamed with his brother to win the doubles title that year. He was later a fine amateur golfer and won the Brazilian amateur championship three times.After serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Falkenburg won the 1946 intercollegiate singles and double championships while at the University of Southern California.In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by his son, Robert, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, according to The A.P. Both Tex and Jinx (her birth name was Eugenia; her mother provided her nickname) died in 2003.Describing Falkenburg’s stunning final-set comeback at Wimbledon in 1948, The New York Times reported that “Wimbledon championship fans have seen far better tennis than today’s match, but they’ve rarely witnessed a more exciting one.”As for Falkenburg’s serve that ended the match, 7-5, The Times related how “there was one clear loud pop.”“Bromwich stood flatfooted as the service ace whizzed by him,” The Times wrote. “When a few minutes later, the Duchess of Kent up in the Royal Box presented the coveted trophy to Falkenburg, he looked as surprised as he was pleased.” More

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      in Soccer

      Daniel Sturridge Ordered to Pay $30,000 to Man Who Returned His Dog

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      Daniel Sturridge lost his Pomeranian in a 2019 break-in. A man who returned the dog sued for breach of contract after Mr. Sturridge reneged on a promised reward, according to court records.Daniel Sturridge, an English soccer star, has been ordered to pay $30,000 to a Los Angeles man who found the player’s missing dog in 2019 and who went to court to recoup a reward he said he had been denied for the Pomeranian’s return.After announcing that his Los Angeles home had been broken into, Mr. Sturridge said in a video at the time that he would “pay whatever” to get his missing dog back, offering “20 Gs, 30 Gs, whatever” as a reward without specifying the currency.Shortly after that video was posted, Foster Washington of Los Angeles found the dog, Lucci, and returned him to Mr. Sturridge, according to court records. But Mr. Washington, 30, said he had never been paid, and in March, he filed a lawsuit for breach of contract.On Tuesday, Judge Curtis A. Kin of the Los Angeles County Superior Court issued a default judgment, awarding $30,000 in damages to Mr. Washington.Mr. Sturridge, a former England international star who played for Liverpool and Chelsea and is now a striker for the Australian team Perth Glory, said on Twitter on Saturday that “other people are trying to benefit for their own personal gain” and related a story different from Mr. Washington’s about how the dog had been recovered.“Just to let you know the truth on xmas!” Mr. Sturridge said on Twitter. “I met a young boy who found my dog and paid him a reward, which he was delighted with as was I to get my dog back because he was stolen.”Mr. Sturridge and his representatives did not immediately respond to emails on Saturday. Direct messages sent to an Instagram account for Lucci, which has more than 34,000 followers, were not returned.It all started in July 2019, after Mr. Sturridge’s home was broken into and he discovered that Lucci was missing.“I want my dog back,” he said in a video, adding: “How can you break into a house in L.A. and take somebody’s dog? Are you crazy?”Mr. Washington, who earns $14 an hour as a security guard and has three children, said he had been walking home when he and his best friend’s son saw a dog near 88th Street and South Central Avenue. The boy’s family could not afford to have a pet, so Mr. Washington said he had decided to take the dog home.A few hours later, a friend told Mr. Washington that Mr. Sturridge was searching for a dog that looked similar to the one he had taken in.“He was like, ‘Hey, dude, that dog’s famous,’” Mr. Washington said on Saturday. “And I’m like, ‘What?’” He said he had no idea who Mr. Sturridge was at the time.That day, Mr. Washington posted a photo of the dog on Twitter and asked Mr. Sturridge if it was Lucci.Mr. Washington then contacted Kimberly Cheng from the Los Angeles news station KTLA. Mr. Washington said she had connected him with Mr. Sturridge’s representatives. Ms. Cheng did not respond to a request seeking comment on Saturday.The dog had a small tattoo of numbers on his stomach, Mr. Washington said. Mr. Sturridge asked Mr. Washington over the phone to identify the mark to make sure it was indeed Lucci, Mr. Washington said.They agreed to meet, and when Mr. Sturridge retrieved the dog, he thanked Mr. Washington.“I’m like, ‘Hey, dude, what’s up with the reward?’” Mr. Washington said. “He said, ‘There is no reward.’”Mr. Washington tried to contact Mr. Sturridge, who joined Liverpool in 2013 on a contract reported to be worth about 12 million pounds (nearly $20 million at the time), and his representatives numerous times for weeks but to no avail. Mr. Washington said his phone number and social media accounts were being blocked.It was not immediately clear whether anyone was arrested in connection with the break-in or the theft of Lucci, who was described in court papers as a rare Pomeranian worth an estimated £4,000, or roughly $5,300. The Los Angeles police did not respond to messages on Saturday.Mr. Washington went to the police, who “concluded that he was not one of the thieves, or related to the burglary crime in any way,” the lawsuit said. “Mr. Washington has never been implicated in any wrongdoing.”The lawsuit added that Mr. Washington “did not receive the benefit of his bargain for supplying the dog safely and in good health.”Mr. Washington said he had received direct messages online from people calling him selfish for wanting to get paid, but during the pandemic, as he struggled financially, he decided to file the lawsuit.“I don’t see how I’m a bad guy by expecting him to honor this reward,” he said, adding: “Thirty thousand dollars is a lot of money. For anybody, that’s a life-changing amount of money.” More

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      in Football

      Matthew Stafford Wanted Big Games. Against Tom Brady's Bucs, He Got One.

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      After 12 seasons in Detroit with no postseason wins, the quarterback longed to play in big games. On Sunday he delivered, beating Tom Brady and the Buccaneers in Los Angeles.INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Matthew Stafford said he wanted these moments.After 12 seasons at quarterback in Detroit, where his biggest platform was the annual Thanksgiving afternoon game and his performances played second fiddle to TV viewers’ turkey dinners, Stafford, 33, asked to be traded. He wanted to play against quality competition in games that mattered.Against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Stafford got that opportunity. Billed as a prospective preview of the N.F.C. championship game and contested in front of celebrities like Mike Tyson and Jason Sudeikis, Stafford faced the ferocious pass rush that fueled the Bucs’ Super Bowl win last season and Tom Brady, arguably the greatest quarterback of all time.Stafford outshone them all. The Rams beat the Buccaneers, 34-24, thanks to his strong arm and smart decisions, along with a stout performance by Los Angeles’s defense. Granted, Stafford’s showing — 343 passing yards, four touchdowns and zero turnovers — came against a secondary handicapped by injuries.But in front of more than 73,000 fans, Stafford showed he could make the throws necessary to make playing a Super Bowl at home in SoFi Stadium this season a reality. Afterward, he downplayed the significance of the win.“Every time we go out there it is a big one,” Stafford said in a postgame news conference. “It was a big challenge for us but it was nice for us to go out there and play our game.”His flatline response was a stark contrast to the ballast from both teams leading into a game players called a barometer to determine their standing in the league. Both were undefeated, viewed as among the best in the conference and the N.F.L. When they met last November, Brady and the former Rams quarterback Jared Goff attempted a combined 99 passes and racked up 592 yards in the air as the Rams barely won a shootout, 27-24.Their 2020 seasons diverged. Tampa Bay won eight of its last nine games en route to the Super Bowl. The Rams, bitten by irresponsible play from Goff, wasted the effort of the league’s top-ranked defense toward the end of the season and exited in the divisional round of the playoffs.But the Rams did not have Stafford last season, and his play offered glimpses of what Coach Sean McVay’s offense could achieve with a quarterback capable of placing the ball anywhere on the field.Stafford completed a 75-yard touchdown pass to DeSean Jackson, the veteran receiver, in the third quarter, and connected on two touchdown passes to receiver Cooper Kupp and one to tight end Tyler Higbee. After the scoring throw to Jackson, whom Stafford had missed connecting with twice earlier in the game, McVay became so excited that he sprinted down the sideline to greet Jackson in a stadium tunnel.But perhaps Stafford’s most important throw did not directly account for any points.Midway into the third quarter, Brady orchestrated a 75-yard touchdown drive to cut Los Angeles’s lead to 21-14. Facing third-and-10 from the Rams’ 25-yard line, Stafford fired a pass to receiver Robert Woods for 20 yards, converting on a crucial play instead of giving the ball back to Brady with an opportunity to tie the score.Three plays later, Stafford connected with Jackson for a 40-yard catch and run to set up Kupp’s second touchdown, a 10-yard catch.The Rams often failed in long-yardage situations last season in part because they lacked an explosive deep threat at receiver and because Goff struggled when defenses did not need to respect the run or play-action. Now, with Stafford at the helm, McVay can unleash a variety of play calls he could not in 2020.“As an offense, you always don’t want to be stagnate,” Kupp said of the unit’s design with Stafford. “Our job as an offense is to not be stuck doing the same thing over and over again but be able to have answers off it and make things look the same but be different.”Still, the Buccaneers played competitively, considering how short-handed they were. Receiver Antonio Brown was not available after testing positive for the coronavirus this week. Pass rusher Jason Pierre-Paul also did not play because of hand and shoulder injuries.The secondary lost cornerback Jamel Dean in the first quarter to a knee injury, a blow to a position group that had already been depleted with starter Sean Murphy-Bunting on injured reserve. McVay and Stafford exploited those absences early as receivers slipped past coverages and behind defenders with ease.Brady, a California native who had never played an N.F.L. game in Los Angeles, finished with 432 yards and one touchdown pass. He also rushed for a score. The Rams’ defense hit Brady five times and sacked him three times, including a tackle by Aaron Donald that forced a fumble that the Buccaneers recovered. Though at times it gave up chunk plays, Los Angeles’s defense generally rallied to ball carriers for tackles and ultimately limited Tampa Bay to only 35 rushing yards. Brady led the team with 14.“They played the kind of game they wanted to play,” Brady said. “If we’re going to be a team like that, we have to play well in all phases.”Stafford and the Rams enter a critical stretch of the schedule, facing two N.F.C. West rivals, the Arizona Cardinals and Seattle Seahawks, in Weeks 4 and 5. Those matchups will matter for playoff seeding in the new 17-game regular season. After that, Stafford will be the one ensuring that he and the Rams have even bigger games in which to play. More

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      in Basket

      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