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What Might Have Been: Wizards - Cavs and the triumphant return of Arenas and Haywood posted on 04/02/2009

Arenas, Haywood, and What Could Have Been

Up 7, three minutes left in the Washington-Cleveland game. Still plenty of time to blow it, if these are the same Wizards who've been playing all year. Then Mo Williams puts up a shot from the perimeter as Brendan Haywood stands intimidatingly in the paint. The Cavs have taken a lot of perimeter shots on this night, especially when Haywood's been on the court. Williams' shot clangs off the iron, and Gilbert Arenas, like Haywood playing in his second game of the season, goes up for the clutch rebound. As he comes down, Arenas whips the ball down the court to a streaking Antawn Jamison for the breakaway dunk. Up 9. Now it's real. All game long, the crowd has wondered if it should believe, wanted to believe, hoped to believe, and the players on the court seemed to be doing the same. Now they believe. You can see it on Nick Young's face as he takes an Arenas pass and charges to the hole with 1:30 left. You can see it in Caron Butler's eyes as he leaps up to steal the Cavs' inbounds pass down 5 and with 50 second remaining to essentially put the game away. You can see it in the body language of all the Wizards as LeBron does what LeBron does, finding open teammates, hitting long three after long three, and generally defying every rule about how basketball is supposed to work. The Wizards team that has played most of this season would have collapsed, folded, stopped playing defense and started throwing up bad shots on the offensive end. Instead, they keep hustling, keep getting after the boards, and let an eerily calm and collected Arenas take control of the offense. And, lo and behold, Arenas, Haywood, Butler, Jamison and the crew make more plays down the stretch than the King.

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The end of Pitt-Villanova and how teams usually do buzzer-beaters wrong posted on 03/31/2009
 

The Art of the Buzzer-Beater

Ok, let me start by saying I'm not going to write about how to shoot a buzzer-beater. If I knew things the professionals don't about that, the Wizards would have called me in for a tryout by now, especially the way their season is going. No, I assume that the guys who take those shots know all about squaring up their shoulders and hips, following through, and shooting like it's practice (except Kobe, who I think would raise his shooting percentage about 15 points if he took every shot like it was a buzzer-beater). What I've been noticing about buzzer-beaters this year, in college and in the NBA, is that very few teams seem to be well-coached enough to know which buzzer-beater to take.

Let me give you an example of a good solution to this problem first. It's March, so I'm going to use an example from the college game. For the 98% of American hoops fans who prefer amateur hour – oh, is that not what they're calling it these days? Sorry, to let those who prefer the college game know, this will probably never happen again, so don't get used to it. Anyway, I was watching Pitt-Villanova on Saturday, and after almost blowing it with that insane full-court toss (I'll get back to that in a minute), Villanova executed the perfect play for the situation they were in (tie game, 5 seconds left) and made a layup with 6/10 of a second on the clock. The play itself was a classic hook-and-ladder, something seen more often in football but equally effective here. Scottie Reynolds ran the ladder, getting a dish from Dante Cunningham and charging down the floor and into the paint, where he made a tough layup in traffic for the win. A fantastic play, and a great ending to a great game. Except it didn't have to be the end.

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