Harrison Barnes scored a season-high 28 points, Devin Harris broke a fourth-quarter tie with eight straight points and the Dallas Mavericks beat the Brooklyn Nets 119-113 on Wednesday night.
Teenage rookie Luka Doncic had 21 points and nine rebounds as the Mavericks won their fifth consecutive home game. They kept the Nets from winning straight three straight on the road for the first time since late in the 2014-15 season, a night after a 12-point win in Miami.
Allen Crabbe scored a season-high 27 points for the Nets, including consecutive 3-pointers followed by an assist on a dunk for Jarrett Allen on an 8-0 run that got Brooklyn within two with four minutes remaining. Crabbe was 7 of 11 behind the arc.
Dallas Mavericks guard Dennis Smith Jr. (1) and center DeAndre Jordan (6) defend Brooklyn Nets guard D'Angelo Russell (1) during the first half of an NBA basketball game in Dallas, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. (AP PhotoMichael Ainsworth)
Barnes, who was 5 of 8 from long range, answered with a 3 to help the Mavericks get the lead back to nine with less than a minute to go.
Dallas won for the fifth time in six games on a night when Dirk Nowitzki was presented a key to the city by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings at halftime.
The German star is still waiting to start a record 21st season with the same franchise because of a longer-than-expected recovery from left ankle surgery seven months ago.
Dallas Mavericks center DeAndre Jordan (6) makes a shot in front of Brooklyn Nets center Jarrett Allen (31) during the first half of an NBA basketball game in Dallas, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. (AP PhotoMichael Ainsworth)
Harris scored 18 points, including eight straight to break an 87-87 tie, making three free throws, hitting a 3-pointer and then stealing a pass and scoring on a bank shot in the lane for a 95-87 Dallas lead. J.J. Barea also had 18 and seven assists.
Spencer Dinwiddie had 19 points and seven assists for the Nets on a night Dallas coach Rick Carlisle called him a candidate for sixth man of the year.
DIRK CONNECTION
Brooklyn Nets forward Joe Harris (12) tries to get past Dallas Mavericks forward Luka Doncic (77) during the first half of an NBA basketball game in Dallas, Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018. (AP PhotoMichael Ainsworth)
Nets coach Kenny Atkinson played for the team in Nowitzki's German hometown, Wurzburg, and said he remembers Nowitzki's mom having a role in handling the team's laundry. Atkinson also played for Braunschweig, and said he faced Nowitzki's Wurzburg team. "He dropped 30 on us. He was 18 of 19," Atkinson said. Early the next morning, Atkinson said, he went to the gym to lift weights and Nowitzki was already there with longtime personal coach Holger Geschwindner. "Right then, you're like, 'This guy's special,'" said the 51-year-old Atkinson, who is in his third season with Brooklyn.
TIP-INS
Nets: Leading scorer Caris LeVert missed his fifth straight game with a right foot injury. ... Ed Davis made all eight shots and finished with 17 points, while D'Angelo Russell also scored 17 but was just 6 of 18 from the field.
Mavericks: G Wesley Matthews was out for the fourth time in five games with a left hamstring strain. F/C Dwight Powell missed his second straight game with a left knee injury. ... G Dennis Smith Jr. played despite a right wrist sprain, finishing with season lows of four points and 19 minutes. ... C DeAndre Jordan had his 11th double-double with 12 points and 14 rebounds.
UP NEXT
Nets: Face Minnesota on Friday to start stretch of seven of eight at home.
Mavericks: Host Boston on Saturday.
More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is hearing arguments Tuesday over state laws barring transgender girls and women from playing on school athletic teams.
Lower courts ruled for the transgender athletes in Idaho and West Virginia who challenged the state bans, but the conservative-dominated Supreme Court might not follow suit.
In just the past year, the justices ruled in favor state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youths and allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced.
The legal fight is playing out amid a broad effort by President Donald Trump to target transgender Americans, beginning on the first day of his second term and including the ouster of transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
The culture war cases come from Idaho and West Virginia, among the first of the more than two dozen Republican-led states that have banned transgender athletes from girls' and women’s teams.
The justices are evaluating claims of sex discrimination lodged by transgender people versus the need for fair competition for women and girls, the main argument made by the states.
In the first case, Lindsay Hecox, 25, sued over Idaho's first-in-the-nation ban for the chance to try out for the women's track and cross-country teams at Boise State University in Idaho. She didn't make either squad but competed in club-level soccer and running.
Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 15-year-old high school sophomore, has been taking puberty-blocking medication, publicly identified as a girl since age 8 and has been issued a West Virginia birth certificate recognizing her as female. She is the only transgender person who has sought to compete in girls' sports in West Virginia.
Pepper-Jackson has progressed from a back-of-the-pack cross-country runner in middle school to a statewide third-place finish in the discus in just her first year of high school.
Prominent women in sports have weighed in on both sides. Tennis champion Martina Navratilova, swimmers Summer Sanders and Donna de Varona and beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh-Jennings are supporting the state bans. Soccer stars Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn and basketball players Sue Byrd and Breanna Stewart back the transgender athletes.
The high-court arguments are expected to focus on whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education.
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled LGBTQ people are protected by a landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace, finding that “sex plays an unmistakable role” in employers’ decisions to punish transgender people for traits and behavior they otherwise tolerate.
But last year, the six conservative justices on the nine-member court declined to apply the same sort of analysis when they upheld state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors.
The states supporting the prohibitions on transgender athletes argue there is no reason to extend the ruling barring workplace discrimination to Title IX, which dramatically increased opportunities for girls and women in school sports.
Lawyers for Pepper-Jackson argue that the law protects people like their client from discrimination. They are asking for a ruling that would apply to the unique circumstances of her early transition. In Hecox's case, her lawyers want the court to dismiss the case because she has forsworn trying to play on women's teams.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women’s sports after Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
A decision is expected by early summer.
Follow the AP's coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
