NBA Clutch Encounters — 2/25/2021
So what exactly was Denver doing?
Wizards vs Nuggets
Let’s skip way forward here. Wizards lead 111–108 with 1:57 left.
Murray-Jokic game.
Wizards actually play this pretty well, Westbrook covers both Jokic and the corner here and forces him to drive and he misses the bank shot.
Beal slows it down and sends it to Westbrook who tries to post up. He then throws it into the backcourt. Terrible idea that ends terribly.
Jokic posts up himself on the other end (though he got there kind of flukily off a deflected pass). He’s doubled and Michael Porter Jr’s man loses track of him.
Nice cut, nice pass. 112–110.
Wild possession here. Beal drives past Jokic and passes to the corner, and the ball swings to Westbrook. He drives and loses the ball. It goes right to Beal who finds a cutting Lopez. He then loses it himself. And then Compazzo saves it off the leg of Lopez. Washington should have scored it three times.
Another Murray-Jokic game. Nothing doing and Jokic has to try and drive past Lopez again. Ball swings around off the drive-and-kick. Murray ends up with a tough 3. Nope. Good defence.
Westbrook lost the ball on a drive again. Goes to Raul Neto — who had a good game and good end to the game here. But he missed.
Now, this has become a talked about thing.
Off the miss, the Nuggets end up with a 4-on-1. First of all, horrible situtational awareness from the Wizards. You’re leading. Get the fuck back. Anyways, Murray takes it up the court and the Nuggets do this.
???
They only end up with a Campazzo 3 and he barely hits the rim. Wizards win 112–110. Now, people are blaming analytics for this. This is NOT what the analytics would say to do. If any of the other three Nuggets drive to the rim they score 100% of the time. Why the hell would the NERDS say to go to the 3-point line here? It’s actually a much less efficient play. Denver clearly lost track of the score. They all — except Murray, I think, because he was looking for a cutter — thought they were down 3. I rewinded to try and here if any of the coaches yelled the score.
The Denver commentators were blaming Murray. No, it’s not on him. He drew two defenders to him. It’s someone else’s job to go to the basket when there is NO ONE there.
Anyways, point is: don’t just blame the nerds for this. In fact, it’s not clear that if this was just any random point in the game that the correct play is the 3 there. A dunk is just about the best play in basketball, even now. So again, the numbers do NOT support whatever Denver was doing there.
