Sabonis was absolutely justified in protecting his face when he fell down. Draymond kicked a player in the head just 7 games ago.

Since mods randomly removed my previous clip, here is the link to the incident here: https://streamable.com/067cz0.

As you can see, Draymond deliberately kicks Herb Jones in the head and gets off scot-free by the refs. Sabonis is absolutely justified in trying to protect his face from a player who literally has a very recent history of kicking players in the face.