Second thoughts

that can and does cause serious injury to our team and those that love it, not be allowed in San Antonio,” Alfonso Kennard, Jr., the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told Nick Moyle of the San Antonio Express-News.

The suit claims Pachulia acted “without excuse or justification, intentionally and maliciously invaded the landing zone of an opposing athlete, Kawhi Leonard.”

Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich also wasn’t happy with Pachulia, deeming the play that caused Leonard’s injury “dangerous” and “unsportsmanlike.”

“This particular individual has a history with that kind of action,” Popovich said earlier this week. “You can go back and look at Dallas [Mavericks] games where he got a flagrant two for elbowing Patty Mills. The play where he took Kawhi down and locked his arm in Dallas and could have broken his arm. Ask David West, his current teammate, how things went when Zaza was playing for Dallas and he and David got into it.”

Vazquez channeled Popovich’s anger into a civil suit.

Pachulia’s action, according to the complaint, “devastated the quality of the Spurs’ chances of being competitive and having additional games in their home arena, both in the Western Conference Finals and also potentially the NBA Finals” and also negatively affected “the value of the tickets purchased by plaintiff subsequent to their purchase.”

The lawsuit seeks damages of no more than $73,000.

Lost cause

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban admitted Wednesday the franchise tried to lose games after being eliminated from playoff contention this season.

As a guest on The Dan Patrick Show, Cuban was asked about tanking after the team landed the ninth overall pick in the draft lottery Tuesday night.

“Once we were eliminated from the playoffs, we did everything possible to lose games,” Cuban said.

Dallas finished the regular season with the league’s ninth-worst record after going 2-8 over its final 10 games, missing the Western Conference playoffs by eight games.

In November, ESPN’s Tim MacMahon noted Cuban didn’t believe tanking entire seasons in an effort to accumulate a series of high draft picks was a formula for long-term success.

“There are so many teams that became four years away from four years away because guys just learned how to lose,” Cuban said. “They stopped caring about any individual game and just got used to it, and you don’t want guys developing those bad habits. We have so many young guys on this team, we want the games to mean something. Not to be, ‘OK, who are we going to pull in the fourth quarter so we can lose this game?’ That’s not how teams develop good habits.”

An idea to change the draft lottery process that’s been brought forth in the NHL is the “Gold Plan,” which Patrick mentioned to Cuban in their interview. It suggests placing teams in a draft order based on the number of points, or victories in the NBA’s case, after they are mathematically out of playoff contention.

Cuban said he didn’t believe that would work because teams would simply try to get eliminated from playoff contention sooner.

Cuban