After storming back from an eight-point deficit over the final two minutes of regulation, the Golden State Warriors had possession on a sideline out-of-bounds, in a tie game, with 1.9 seconds remaining vs. the visiting Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday.
Stephen Curry was tabbed with being the inbound passer.
This has long been a point of frustration for me: teams using their most dangerous shooter as the inbound passer against short-clock situations. Anyone who watches any amount of NBA basketball has surely heard a hundred broadcasters tell you that the in-bounder is the most dangerous guy on the floor. They love to tell you this, as if they are revealing some gem of intelligence of which nobody else is aware.
Newsflash: Everyone is aware. Including the defense. The chances of catching an NBA defense napping against an elite shooter as the in-bounder in a short-clock situation are not high. What you’re doing, as a coach making this decision, is pretty much willingly pushing your most dangerous shooter way down the list of possible shooters on a final play.
The Hawks did this with Trae Young a lot under Nate McMillan. It’s strange. Young is short. He isn’t going to have particularly good vision if anyone with length guards the pass. Yes, he’s a natural passer and a trusted decision-maker, but he’s also the guy you want taking the shot, or at least serving as a mobile decoy. Get it in and quickly get it back, you say? That’s where the short clock comes in. The shorter it is, the more likely it is that your best shooter becomes a spectator. In the case of Curry and the Warriors on Saturday night, there were, again, just 1.9 seconds left.
If Curry, who was scorching hot down the stretch of the fourth quarter, was going to have time to pass the ball in, make a move to get open, get a pass back and get a clean shot off, all in 1.9 seconds, it was going to have to come together instantaneously.
As it happened, the high-wire design actually worked.
And the Warriors might’ve had time to fully execute it.
But it was cutting it too close, and Draymond Green called his own number instead.
It went like this: Curry inbounded to Draymond Green, whose defender, Brook Lopez, was sagged off Green for pretty obvious reasons. If Green, a 33-percent low-volume 3-point shooter, wants to pull the trigger on a potential game-winning shot instead of Curry or Klay Thompson or Jordan Poole,…
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