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Said Burries: “Before the game I was listening to a lot of gospel music. I was just in a zone. I woke up feeling great. We had our shootaround and had the chemistry, ‘We can’t lose this one tonight.’

Christie returned to the building where he began and built his blossoming NBA career, where he worked himself from a second-round draft pick into one of the league’s top young guards, as the Mavericks held a shootaround ahead of Tuesday’s game with the Lakers.

The idea to give Alex Timiraos, the team’s athletic communications director, a birthday shout-out had been raised at the morning shootaround.

“Yeah, a couple of young bucks back in the day, winning an NBA championship, and obviously being able to witness his growth firsthand was really cool,” Mills said Tuesday at the Clippers’ shootaround ahead of their game against the Lakers at the Intuit Dome.

Brown, who has appeared as an analyst on Spectrum SportsNet’s studio show for the Lakers and is a regular on the “No Chill With Gilbert Arenas” podcast, was approached to fill in as a commentator on the Sparks broadcast during the team shootaround on the morning of the game.