ongratulation: Luka Doncic Becomes Highest-Paid NBA Player At $85 Million Per Year After Agressing To….

Sound system catches Mavs’ point guard … um … off guard.

It’s safe to assume that Dallas Mavericks fans were pleased with the team’s nine-point victory over the Oklahoma Thunder on Thursday night. But maybe not as pleased as whoever awkwardly interrupted Luka Doncic’s post-game conference.After leading the Mavs to even the Western Conference semifinal series 1–1, Doncic sat at the podium to talk about the big win. That’s when things took a weird turn.The loud sound of a woman moaning suddenly interrupted the meeting full of reporters. Doncic immediately became wide-eyed with shock and stopped speaking mid-sentence. Once the short sound stopped, the point guard hung his head and covered his face with his hand as he and several reporters began laughing.“OK, moving on,” one interviewer said amongst the awkward laughter.

Doncic then sat up straight with a smile and prepared to carry on with the interview.“I hope that’s not live,” Doncic joked.Twitter has theorized the sound came from any number of sources, with guesses ranging from a journalist opening the wrong tab on their phone to someone’s locker room incident being broadcast on a speaker. Representatives for the Mavericks could not immediately be reached for comment on where the sound came from. However, according to today’s episode of The Athletic NBA Show podcast, it may have been a prank by one of Doncic’s teammates.Tim Cato, a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Mavs, went on the show today with the podcast’s host and producer, Andrew Schlecht, to talk about last night’s game. Cato said he did not witness the incident himself, but heard it was a player who played a video through their phone to mess with Doncic. However, that player was not identified to his knowledge.

“I had to clarify it was a player to defend the honor of the Dallas media core,” Cato joked. “We don’t do that type of stuff down here.”

Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic may have intervened to keep an Oklahoma City Thunder fan from being ejected from Thursday’s game, possibly for motivational purposes.

In the latest episode of the “Take Dat Wit You” podcast, Mavericks studio analyst Brian Dameris said he watched Doncic intervene on a fan’s behalf during a timeout in Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals. Doncic had some sort of altercation with a fan during the game, and according to Dameris, referee Scott Foster was planning to eject the fan for heckling Doncic’s family. Doncic told him not to, apparently because it was fueling the Mavericks star.

“During the timeout, Scott Foster wanted to throw that fan out, and went up to Luka, and Luka was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re good,’ put a thumbs up,” Dameris said. “That just riles him up. That gets him going. You don’t poke bears. I don’t know why people don’t get this. And he was that guy that’s going to strap his team on his back, be that magnet for the defense.”

Doncic told the media after the game that the individual had been “going at my family.” The Mavericks star added it was “kind of nuts” that a grown man would behave that way.

Doncic was awful in Game 1, which likely already had him motivated entering the second game of the series. A heckling fan was only going to fuel him further. He wound up scoring 29 points while collecting 10 rebounds and seven assists in a series-tying victory, so things seem to have worked out for him.