Luka Doncic, who was listed as questionable to play less than two hours before the opening tipoff, scored 32 points with 11 rebounds and 11 assists — the first NBA Finals triple-double in Mavericks franchise history. But he missed a one-footed, running floater from 3-point range with 28 seconds left, ending Dallas’ last chance at a comeback.

Game 3 is Wednesday night in Dallas. The Mavericks need a win then or in Game 4 on Friday to avoid a sweep and earn a trip back to the Boston Garden, where the local fans are already making space in the rafters for what would be an unprecedented 18th NBA championship banner.

The Celtics won the opening pair in the NBA Finals for the ninth time. They have won the previous eight, and have never been forced to a Game 7 in any of them.

Jaylen Brown scored 21 points, Tatum had 18 and Derrick White also scored 18 points for top-seeded Boston. Kristaps Porzingis limped his way to 12 points. Tatum was 6 for 22 shooting and 1 of 7 from 3-point range; the Celtics were 10 for 39 from long distance overall.

Kyrie Irving, who’s drawn the animosity of the local fans ever since cutting short his stay in Boston in 2019, scored 16 points; he has lost 12 games in a row against the Celtics.

Unlike their 107-89 victory in Game 1, when a fast start from 3-point range staked them to a 29-point, first-half lead, the Celtics missed their first eight attempts from long distance and were around 20% for most of the game.

Tatum scored zero points in the first quarter and had only five at halftime, when he was still 0 for 3 from 3-point range. Boston was still just 5 for 30 from long distance when Peyton Pritchard banked in a half-courter at the third-quarter buzzer to give Boston an 83-74 lead.

On Wednesday night, she sprinted into women’s hockey history.

The three-time Olympian chased down a rolling puck and slapped it into an empty net to seal Minnesota’s 3-0 victory over Boston in the winner-take-all Game 5 to claim the inaugural championship of the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

Liz Schepers scored to break a scoreless second-period tie, Michela Cava made it 2-0 midway through the third and Nicole Hensley stopped 17 shots for Minnesota. Coyne Schofield added the empty netter with two minutes left, and then the captain and oldest member of the roster took the first-ever lap on the ice with the Walter Cup.

“It makes me want to tear up thinking about it. She’s done so much for this sport,” said forward Taylor Heise. “She’s definitely one of the people that’s helped this sport grow and one of the reasons why this arena is sold out here tonight.”

Coyne Schofield, 32, was fresh off of winning the 2018 Olympic gold medal when she was invited to take part in a timed lap around the ice at the 2019 NHL All-Star Game. She finished seventh out of eight, but was a crowd favorite in an arena filled with chants of “U-S-A!”

“What was so important about that moment wasn’t the skate itself. It’s what happened after,” she said on the ice while her teammates posed for pictures with the trophy and and her husband stood nearby holding the son she gave birth to less than a year ago.

“It was the attention that that skate drew to so many people,” said Coyne Schofield, who was active in helping the PWHL come to fruition. “That moment brought a lot of eyes and helped catapult the reality we’re living today.”

Three nights after Minnesota prematurely celebrated a would-be game-winner in double overtime that was waved off for goaltender interference, Hensley earned her second shutout of the playoffs. Minnesota limped into the playoffs on a five-game losing streak and then got shut out in the first two games of best-of-five semifinal against Toronto.

Heise, whose eight points in the postseason was tied for the most in the league, was named the inaugural Ilana Kloss Playoff MVP. The former Minnesota Gopher was the league’s first No. 1 draft pick.

How Kendall Coyne Schofield and the PWHL aim to ‘change the landscape of women’s hockey forever’

“ We’re ‘the State of Hockey,’” she said. “And I think this proves it.”

Boston goalie Aerin Frankel, dubbed the “Green Monster” in her forest green home sweater, made 41 saves for the runners-up. The sold-out crowd at the Tsongas Center, about an hour north of Boston, chanted her name and “Thank you, Boston!” after the final buzzer, even as the Minnesota players celebrated on the ice and league officials set up the podium for the trophy presentation.

Boston forced a decisive fifth game only after Sophie Jaques’ apparent goal in double overtime in Game 4 was taken off the board because of goaltender interference. The Minnesota players, who had already streamed onto the ice to celebrate, throwing their equipment in the air, gathered up their gloves and sticks, and the game resumed.

One minute later, Alina Muller scored to send the series back to Boston.

The crowd was eager for the home team to claim the new trophy, named for league benefactor and Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter, chanting “We want the Cup!” just like Bruins fans do down in Boston. A Fenway-style “Sweet Caroline” singalong kept them busy during the second break.

But with the game scoreless early in the second, Minnesota forward Sydney Brodt skated through the slot toward the goal. She whiffed on a wrist shot, drawing Frankel out of position, then slid around to the right side and centered the puck behind her, where Schepers tipped it in.

It was still 1-0 when Cava circled behind the net and stuffed the puck between Frankel’s pads; it trickled toward the net before the goalie knocked it over the line when she reached back to save it with her stick hand.

The game was a crowd-pleasing conclusion to the six-team league’s first season, when it blew through some benchmarks but left others unmet.

A game in Montreal against Toronto drew more than 21,000 fans to the Bell Centre. Average attendance in the regular season was 5,448, giving the league confidence to expand the schedule from 24 games to 30 next year. Toronto is looking for a bigger home than the 2,500-seat arena where it played most of its games.

One negative was below-average attendance for the New York team, which split its home between Connecticut, Long Island and New Jersey. Games were broadcast nationally in English and French in Canada, but U.S. fans were left with regional networks and YouTube.

And the teams don’t have nicknames yet — a result of the rush to get on the ice in six months after the two competing pro women’s hockey leagues in North America declared a truce, with help from Walter and tennis great Billie Jean King, last summer. The league said on Wednesday that names and logos will be announced in August.

“This year was a historic year,” Boston captain Hilary Knight said. “We built it. We’re extremely ecstatic about where it is Year 1. If anything, that reflection point is something we can take away from tonight and celebrate.”

The grandson of Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski hit a solo homer to right field — not far from where the former Boston outfielder’s retired No. 8 is hanging from the façade — to help San Francisco beat the Red Sox 3-1 on Thursday.

“I’m looking around, and I have my greatest childhood memories here,” said Mike Yastrzemski, who also homered five years ago in his only other visit to the ballpark where his grandfather played 23 seasons.

“The first one was like, super crazy, where I actually couldn’t believe that happened,” he said. “It was a little bit more normal this week, and I actually got to enjoy it while I was here rather than reflecting on it and being like, ‘Man, that was really cool.’”

Yastrzemski, 33, has three home runs this season and 90 in his six-year career, all with the Giants. This one cleared the short wall in front of the Red Sox bullpen in the third inning of a scoreless, hitless game to give San Francisco a 1-0 lead.

Giants manager Bob Melvin thanked “the baseball gods.”

“Got a smile out of me,” said the former major league catcher, who spent one of his 10 major league seasons in Boston and was not quite six when Carl Yastrzemski won the AL Triple Crown and led the “Impossible Dream” Red Sox to the pennant in 1967. “I was just awestruck. So I didn’t have a ton to say to him. … There are some cool days in baseball, and I’ve had a lot of them. This was one of them.”

Mike Yastrzemski says he sees his grandfather a couple of times a year. He will sometimes ask the three-time batting champion and ’67 AL MVP for hitting advice, but the man he calls “Papa Yaz” will more often talk about family.

“One of the things that he’s done incredibly well as a grandfather is letting me have my career,” Mike said. “He’ll pick up the phone when I call, and if I ask him questions, he’ll answer. But he’s never forcing anything on me. He’s never suggesting anything. He’s always told me, ‘When in doubt, talk to your hitting coaches.’”

On Thursday, Mike said, they didn’t talk about hitting at all. The elder Yaz asked how he was physically, and it was “just good to see him,” Mike said.

“It was fun to just have him around for a minute,” he said.

And then the 84-year-old Hall of Famer split, without sticking around for the game.

“I think he left the car running when he was in here,” Mike said with a smile. “But that’s normal. He’s quick to the point.”

The Crimson Tide, who have won 18 NCAA football championships but have never been to a men’s basketball Final Four, will meet top-seeded UConn in the national semifinals on April 6. The Huskies have a chance to win back-to-back NCAA titles — which would make it six in 13 years for the Big East, the league that takes pride in its basketball pedigree even as football money upended the rest of college sports.

“The Big East is a monster,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said after the Huskies (35-3) steamrolled Illinois 77-52 on Saturday night — a March Madness record 10th straight double-digit victory for the Huskies.

“Iron sharpens iron,” Hurley said. “The league prepares us for these nonconference games. … You’re going against beasts and monsters every night in the Big East, and the Big East prepared us for teams like Illinois.”

UConn has beaten three Big Ten teams this season, having topped Indiana in the regular season and Northwestern in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies did not play an SEC team this year but went 3-0 against them last season, including an 82-67 victory over Alabama on Nov. 22, 2022.

“We’re going to be tough to beat,” said Hurley, whose team scored 30 straight points against Illinois to break open game that was tied 23-all in the final two minutes of the first half. “It was a special level of basketball that we were playing.”

Donovan Clingan had 22 points, 10 rebounds and five blocked shots for UConn, which cruised to its fifth national title last year and seems inexorably headed for a sixth.

Their NCAA Tournament wins this year have come by 39, 17, 30 and 25 points.

Actor Bill Murray, whose son, Luke, is a Huskies assistant coach, watched the game from a courtside seat and took video of the postgame celebration, where his grandchildren were showered with confetti. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David was also part of a heavily partisan crowd the Huskies (35-3) called “ Storrs North ” for the East Region games that were played about 90 miles from campus.

UConn, which won the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden and advanced to the Sweet 16 in Brooklyn, will now get on an airplane for the first time in almost a month and head to the Final Four outside of Phoenix. Alabama advanced with an 89-82 victory over Clemson later Saturday night.

The Huskies, who set a school record for victories in a season, are the first defending champs to make it back to the national semifinals since Florida won back-to-back titles in 2006 and ’07.

That’s still a possibility for UConn, too.

“It’s not about really trying to win No. 6 or go back-to back,” Hurley said. “It’s this time of year, you love your team and you can’t imagine what it would be like to not get up the next day and still coach your team. It’s what you learn when you win the way we’ve won: It really is about the work, the journey, the process.”

The Fighting Illini (29-9) managed just four points in the first half when Clingan was in the game, with the 7-foot-2 Connecticut native recording nine points, six rebounds and three blocks before the break. Overall, they were 0 for 19 on shots challenged by Clingan.

“We were getting the same shots we’ve always gotten, and Clingan erased a few of them,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said. “He’s good. I mean, doesn’t everybody have him projected in the (NBA) lottery or close to it? He does a great job of protecting the rim.”

“Oh, boy. That thing was a wreck,” the former NBA player and “Survivor” contestant told The Associated Press on Friday, a day after he was released from the hospital and two weeks after he received a heart transplant.

“The doctors immediately knew I was much closer to death once they pulled my heart out,” Pollard said. “I don’t think I would have made it another couple of weeks.”

An 11-year NBA veteran who was a member of the 2008 champion Boston Celtics, Pollard inherited a condition from his father, who died at 54, when Scot was 16. Scot Pollard’s heart deteriorated quickly after he contracted a virus in 2021; attempts to fix the problem with medication or less radical procedures were unsuccessful, leaving a transplant as the only option.

But finding a heart big enough to pump blood throughout the body of the 6-foot-11, 260-pound former NBA center was a challenge. Pollard was advised to list himself at as many transplant centers as possible (though they needed to be nearby, so he could be available within four hours if a donor heart became available.)

Pollard, 49, underwent pre-transplant testing near his home in Carmel, Indiana, and Chicago, but when he arrived at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center last month he was admitted to intensive care and bumped up to the second-highest priority for organ transplants, because of his condition.

Nine days later, his wife, Dawn, posted on X: “ It’s go time!”

“The fact that it came so quick probably saved my life. I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted,” Scot Pollard said. “I was just declining so fast.”

Privacy rules don’t allow Pollard to know the identity of his donor, though doctors told him it was “a big man.” What is allowed: A recipient can write a letter that will be delivered to the donor’s family if they want. (They can also write the recipient, though Pollard had not received such a letter yet.)

Speaking from temporary housing in Nashville, Tennessee, where he needs to stay for the next six to eight weeks so he can have the proper follow-up care, Pollard said he has written a draft of his letter. In it, he thanks the donor – whom he calls a hero – and offers to connect.

“I would like to show them how their big man’s heart is living on and helping people,” he said. “I would love to show them this heart isn’t going to waste.”

Pollard has been warned that many donors’ families don’t want contact with the recipient, because it makes them relive their loved ones’ death. Heart donors, in particular, are often accident victims who were otherwise healthy.

“If it’s a healthy heart, that’s because something else killed them,” Pollard said. “I hope they reach out, because I would like to include them in the rest of my life.”

That life has already improved.

Even after he retired from the NBA, Pollard liked to keep busy – with broadcasting, a few acting roles and as a reality show contestant. But over the last few months, he needed to stop to rest even just walking around the house.

It was only when he woke up after the five-hour surgery that he realized how bad things had gotten.

“I was laying around all the time. That just became my new normal,” he said. “As an athlete, you just sort of put things out of your mind. You push through it. But I couldn’t push that heart. I can already tell I can push this heart.”

After the transplant, which was performed by Dr. Ashish Shah, Pollard was walking around the hospital ward within a day. He is now up to “easy squats,” and working on his balance.

“I’m a mover. I don’t sit around well,” Pollard said.

On Thursday, Pollard danced and shadow-boxed his way down the hospital corridor in a tank top that said “BUT DID YOU DIE?” His care-givers applauded as he yelled “I’m getting out!” and mugged for a camera as he rang the discharge bell.

HE MADE IT!! 13 days post heart transplant and he got to ring the bell! pic.twitter.com/n6f5p5ibem

— Dawn Pollard (@DawnMPollard) February 29, 2024

Pollard said he is going to campaign for organ donation.

“I’m going to annoy people with becoming a donor. That’s going to be a project for the rest of my life,” he said.

He’s already helped convince one person to sign up.

“I had never considered being an organ donor, because I wasn’t really educated about it and there were some fears when I thought about the process,” Dawn Pollard said. “It became our reality that Scot needed a heart, so I immediately got registered. I am proud to be an organ donor now. It makes me feel good knowing I could be helping someone live.”

“This is a little bit of a difficult position,” he said on Friday at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. “We’re purely doing exactly as we’ve been told, and we’ve been told we’re doing everything exactly right. And we’re getting the s—- kicked out of us. So that’s not fun.”

Since reporting to spring training this month, some players have complained about the fit of new uniforms. The white pants worn by some teams are also see-through enough to clearly show tucked-in jersey tops.

“I know everyone hates them,” Phillies shortstop Trea Turner said. “We all liked what we had. We understand business, but I think everyone wanted to keep it the same way, for the most part, with some tweaks here or there.”

Rubin said uniforms were made to the specifications set by MLB and Nike. Fanatics has been making the baseball uniform since 2017, he said; Fanatics bought the company that has been making the uniforms since 2005, so there has been no real change in the manufacturer in almost two decades.

Rubin said Nike made changes “for all the right reasons” after getting feedback from players who wanted material more breathable and stretchable.

“Nike designs everything. Hands us a spec and says, ‘Make this,’” he said. “We have made everything exactly to the spec, And Nike and baseball would say ‘Yes, you’ve done everything we’ve asked you do to.’”

Rubin said part of the problem is players needing to get used to the changes, saying a similar issue dissipated after NFL and NBA uniforms changed. But in the future he said he would try to involve more people in the decisions.

“They got certain players on board, not all players on board. When you change something so old and so nostalgic you need everybody to be on board with it,” Rubin said. “I believe Nike will be proved right.”

MLB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Players’ Association head Tony Clark said Thursday his members had voiced their objections.

“The commentary that’s being offered suggests that the powers that be are paying attention to the concerns that are there and are engaging how best to address them moving forward.” Clark said.

NBA champion and “Survivor” contestant Scot Pollard is “awake and feeling great” a day after a heart transplant, his wife said Saturday on social media.

“Scot has a new heart!” Dawn Pollard posted Friday night on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Surgery went well and I’ve been told the heart is big, powerful and is a perfect fit! Now on to the crucial part of recovery.”

She posted an update Saturday, writing: “Look who’s awake and is feeling great! Breathing tube came out early this morning and he started cracking jokes and singing, ‘I left my heart in San Fran-Nashville.’ We are all amazed at Scot’s recovery so far!”

Pollard, who turned 49 on Monday, needed a transplant because of damage to his heart from a virus he caught in 2021 that likely triggered a genetic condition he has known about since it killed his father at 54, when Scot was 16. Pollard’s size complicated efforts to find a donor with a heart big enough to fit his 6-foot-11, 260-pound body.

Earlier Friday, Dawn Pollard posted that a heart had been found.

“It’s go time!” she posted on X. “Please keep the prayers coming for Scot, the surgeons, for the donor and his family who lost their loved one. This donor gave the most amazing gift of life and we are forever grateful.”

Pollard was a 1997 first-round draft pick after helping Kansas reach the NCAA Sweet 16 in four straight seasons. He was a useful big man off the bench for much of an NBA career that stretched over 11 years and five teams. He played 55 seconds in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ trip to the NBA Finals in 2007, and won it all the following year with the Boston Celtics despite a season-ending ankle injury in February.

Pollard retired after that season, then dabbled in broadcasting and acting. He was a contestant on the 32nd season of “Survivor,” where he was voted out on Day 27 with eight castaways remaining.

Pollard went public with his condition last month and began the process of listing himself at transplant centers. He was admitted to intensive care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Feb. 7.

“I’m staying here until I get a heart,” he said in a text message to The Associated Press from his hospital room in Nashville, Tennessee. “My heart got weaker. (Doctors) agree this is my best shot at getting a heart quicker.”

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA

Now it may be killing him.

Pollard needs a heart transplant, an already dire predicament that is made more difficult by the fact so few donors can provide him with a pump big and strong enough to supply blood to his extra large body. He was admitted to intensive care at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Tuesday, and he will wait there until a donor surfaces who was big enough to be a match.

“I’m staying here until I get a heart,” he said in a text message to The Associated Press on Wednesday night. “My heart got weaker. (Doctors) agree this is my best shot at getting a heart quicker.”

At nearly 7 feet tall and with a playing weight of 260 pounds, Pollard’s size rules out most potential donors for a heart to replace the one that — due to a genetic condition that was likely triggered by a virus he contracted in 2021 — has been beating an extra 10,000 times per day. Half of his siblings have the same condition — as did his father, who died at 54, when Scot was 16.

“That was an immediate wake-up call,” Pollard said in a recent telephone interview. “You don’t see a lot of old (7-) footers walking around. So I’ve known that my whole life, just because I had that seared into my brain as a 16-year-old, that — yeah, being tall is great, but I’m not going to see 80.”

A 1997 first-round draft pick after helping Kansas reach the NCAA Sweet 16 in four straight seasons, Pollard was a useful big man off the bench for much of an NBA career that stretched over 11 years and five teams. He played 55 seconds in the Cleveland Cavaliers’ trip to the NBA Finals in 2007, and won it all the following year with the Celtics despite a season-ending ankle injury in February.

Pollard retired after that season, then dabbled in broadcasting and acting. He was a contestant on the 32nd season of “Survivor,” where he was voted out on Day 27 with eight castaways remaining.

Although Pollard, 48, has been aware of the condition at least since his father died in the 1990s, it wasn’t until he got sick three years ago that it began to affect his quality of life.

“It feels like I’m walking uphill all the time,” he said on the telephone, when he warned a reporter that he might need to cut it short if he got tired.

Pollard tried medication, and has had three ablations — procedures to try to break up the signals causing the irregular heartbeats. A pacemaker implanted about a year go only gets to about half of the problem.

“They all agree that more ablations isn’t going to fix this, more medication isn’t going to fix that,” Pollard said. “We need a transplant.”

Patients in need of an organ transplant have to navigate a labyrinthine system that attempts to fairly match the donated organs with the recipients in need. The matching process takes the health of the patient into account, all with the goal of maximizing the benefit of the limited organs available.

“It’s out of my hands. It’s not even in the doctor’s hands,” Pollard said. “It’s up to the donor networks.”

To maximize his chances, Pollard was advised to register at as many transplant centers as possible — “it’s increasing my odds at the casino by going to as many casinos at the same time as possible,” he said. But: He must be able to get there within four hours; the need to return for post-operative visits also make it difficult to get treated far from home.

Pollard listed himself at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital in his hometown of Carmel, Indiana, and last week went through testing at the University of Chicago. He traveled this week to Vanderbilt, which performed 128 heart transplants in a record year in 2023. Pollard arrived on Sunday; on Tuesday, doctors admitted him to the I.C.U.

There, Pollard will wait for a new heart – one that is healthy enough to give him a chance, and big enough to fit his oversized frame. He had been living as Status 4 — for those who are in stable condition — but now that he is hospitalized he could be eligible for Status 2, the second-highest priority.

“They can’t predict, but they are confident I’ll get a heart in weeks not months,” he texted.

Pollard acknowledged it’s strange to be hoping for a donor to surface, which is essentially rooting for someone to die.

“The fact is, that person’s going to end up saving someone else’s life. They’re going to be a hero,” he said. “That’s how I look at it. I understand what has to happen for me to get what I need. So it’s a real hard mix of emotions.”

Until then, Pollard waits with the knowledge that the same genetic quirk that helped him a basketball star — so far, the defining achievement of his life — threatens to be a defining factor in his death.

It’s something he’s known since his father died.

“I’ve thought about that my entire life,” he said. “I’m from a family of giants. I’m the youngest of six and I have three brothers that are taller than me. And people are always like, ‘Oh, man, I wish I had your height.’ Yeah? Let’s go sit on an airplane together and see how much you want to be this tall.

“It’s not like being tall is a curse. It’s not. It’s still a blessing. But, I have known my entire life that there’s a good chance I wasn’t going to get old,” he said. “And so it gives you a different perspective on how you live your life and how you treat people and all that kind of stuff.”

The players voted 13-2 on Tuesday to form a union on the campus in Hanover, New Hampshire, after a bid by the school to reopen the case was denied.

But it’s not time to cut down the nets just yet.

Although a recent ruling by a National Labor Relations Board official put the players on the path toward a union, they have a long way to go — years, maybe — before they would be able to sit down with the school and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. The bid is being closely watched.

“We are excited to see how this decision will impact college sports nationwide,” Dartmouth players Cade Haskins and Romeo Myrthil said in a statement after NLRB Regional Director Laura Sacks agreed that they are employees of the school. “We believe that other athletes will recognize the opportunities this ruling presents and will be inspired to follow suit.”

Here is a look at what happened — and what’s next — in the fight for college athlete rights:

The NCAA has long maintained that college players are “student-athletes” — a term designed to perpetrate the pretense that education comes first. But in Power Five leagues like the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference, football is a billion-dollar business that looks more like the NFL than the glee club or other extracurricular activities on campus.

The amateur model is under attack on several fronts, including a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door for athletes to be paid; in response, the NCAA loosened rules to allow players to profit from their celebrity. The NCAA is also facing at least six antitrust lawsuits.

In a different NLRB proceeding, football and basketball players at Southern California say they are employees of the school, the Pac-12 Conference in which they play and the NCAA. That hearing resumes later this month.

At Dartmouth and its Ivy League brethren, though, the “student-athlete” paradigm might actually be accurate.

Dartmouth doesn’t give out athletic scholarships, the school says the program loses money — the players dispute that — and athletes are expected to prioritize their academic responsibilities before sports. The school says playing on the basketball team is not a job; it’s like participating in the orchestra or Model United Nations.

But the players argued that the school exerts enough control over them to make them employees, and Sacks agreed.

“Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I find that the petitioned-for basketball players are employees,” she wrote.

The outcome of the election was never in doubt, considering that all 15 members of the team signed the petition last fall asking to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, which already represents some other employees at the school.

But even with the team’s vote to move ahead, there are other hurdles.

Assuming Dartmouth doesn’t recognize the union, the matter goes to the full NLRB. In a previous case involving the Northwestern football team, the board overturned the initial ruling ( on a technicality that doesn’t apply here ). That appeal took about 15 months, though the Dartmouth players hope for a quicker ruling because it’s a presidential election year with the possibility that the makeup of the board will flip Republican in January.

Even if the full board affirms Sacks’ decision, the school could turn to the federal courts — a process that could delay the resolution for several years, long after the current athletes have moved on. If the players ultimately win — or if Dartmouth drops its opposition — only then would they be able to negotiate on a collective bargaining agreement.

And all that does is give them the chance to argue they are worth more to the school than free gear and lunch money.

The Dartmouth players want to be paid $20 an hour, like the cafeteria workers on campus, with the school paying their health care premiums.

But should they win, the implications are likely to spread throughout college sports.

Other teams on campus could chose to unionize. And rather than cede to Dartmouth the recruiting edge of a salary and benefits, the rest of the Ivy League could be prompted to accept unions as well. (The other option would be to boot Dartmouth from the Ivy League — which seems an unlikely, and temporary, reprieve.)

And if Dartmouth basketball players are ultimately deemed employees, that makes it much more difficult for schools with big-time sports — where they have even more control over their athletes, and the money at stake is into the billions — to prop up the “student-athlete” model. Those future NFL and NBA stars could make millions more if the NCAA business model ultimately goes away.

While the NLRB’s jurisdiction only extends to private institutions, like the Ivies and some Power Five athletic programs like Northwestern, Southern California and Notre Dame, it’s likely that pay-for-play at some schools would create a recruiting imbalance and force the public schools to come along, causing the collapse of the NCAA’s amateurism model.

The NCAA has asked Congress for legislation that will prop up the amateur model and exempt it from antitrust rules that prevent most businesses from working together to cap spending on workers. Dartmouth could also drop its objection and, through the collective bargaining process, determine the free market value of an Ivy League basketball player.

Or, Dartmouth could stop treating the players like employees and downgrade the teams to club status, like the glee club and the other self-funded student organizations that look more like hobbies than jobs.

All 15 members of the Dartmouth men’s basketball team signed a petition in September asking to join Local 560 of the Service Employees International Union, which already represents some other employees at the Ivy League school in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Unionizing would allow the players to negotiate not only over salary but working conditions, including practice hours and travel.

“Because Dartmouth has the right to control the work performed by the Dartmouth men’s basketball team, and the players perform that work in exchange for compensation, I find that the petitioned-for basketball players are employees within the meaning of the (National Labor Relations) Act,” NLRB Regional Director Laura Sacks ruled.

The NCAA and universities across the country have been steadfast in insisting that their athletes are students, not employees. College sports leaders have even lobbied Congress for a federal law that would codify that classification as the NCAA faces a federal lawsuit in Pennsylvania on the subject.

The school can still appeal the regional director’s decision to the national board; that’s what happened when members of the Northwestern football team held a union election in 2014. In case of appeal, the ballots would be impounded pending a ruling. An election can be held while an appeal is pending. All 15 members of the team have already indicated a desire to unionize.

The Northwestern ballots were destroyed after the NLRB, which only governs private employers, decided that allowing the football players at the only private school in the Big Ten Conference would skew the labor market in the conference. It did not address the question of whether the players were employees. All eight Ivy League schools are private.

There is also a complaint before a different NLRB body in California that claims football and basketball players at Southern California should be deemed employees of the school, the Pac-12 Conference in which they play and the NCAA. That hearing is ongoing.

During a four-day hearing in October, Dartmouth argued that the players shouldn’t be considered employees because athletics are part of the academic mission of the school, like performing in the orchestra or even playing club sports.

“At Dartmouth, students’ primary objective is learning,” school attorney Joe McConnell said then. “Dartmouth has adopted policies reflecting that students who participate in intercollegiate athletics are students first and athletes second.”

The college also said the men’s basketball program loses money. Attorneys for the players countered that the school’s numbers leave out important and lucrative revenue streams that the basketball team contributes to.

What’s more, the players say it’s not whether the team turned a profit: What matters is if the program brings in revenue, and also whether coaches have control over the players.

AP College Sports Writer Ralph D. Russo contributed.