The NBA’s first four-overtime game since 1997 combined with the Jazz’s uncharacteristically poor shooting produced a rarity: Utah missed 77 shots from the field (49-for-126, 39%) in a 139-133 loss at Atlanta. That was the highest single-game total in an NBA game since 1993, and it was the most ever by the Jazz and the highest total against the Hawks since the Suns implausibly missed 90 shots in a 48-minute game at Atlanta in 1971 (38-for-128, 30%).
That’s a lot of misses in one night. And while I’m not here to rag on the Hawks, playing their third game in three nights, or the Jazz, playing their third in four, I would like to share what happened in the futile first of four overtimes last night.
Yeah, that’s a combined 2-for-16 from the field. Four points. FOUR. Apparently that’s only the second-worst overtime total in NBA history. I blame the stupid schedule.
DeShawn Stevenson isn’t a great shooter. He isn’t a great passer, either. But sometimes, a miserable pass turns into an incredible shot. Like at the end of the third quarter in Orlando last night. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it.
This is the dynamic duo you’re excited about in Milwaukee, right?
Yeah, maybe not. But if you tuned into the Bucks/Warriors game to see the Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis Show, you ended up watching something a bit different. While it was cool to see Ellis and Ekpe Udoh make their Buck debuts against their former team and see the crowd show its appreciation, the most productive players on the court had nothing to do with the main story:
Luc Richard Mbah a Moute: 22 points (10-15 fg), 17 rebounds (nine offensive), two assists, three steals, one block in 32 minutes.
Mike Dunleavy: 24 points (7-8 fg, 4-5 3pt, 6-6 ft), three rebounds, four assists, zero turnovers in 19 minutes.
For Mbah a Moute, it was a career high in scoring and a season high in rebounding. He did his work just like Ersan Ilyasova was doing it before Ilyasova got sick, with effort and smarts, albeit without the jump shooting.
Dunleavy was about as efficient as you can be, continuing the excellent all-around play off the bench that has keyed Milwaukee’s five-game winning streak. He’s now averaging 20.8 points, 5.2 assists and 3.8 rebounds over the last five, often running the offense with the second unit. Oh, and during that stretch he’s shooting 60.3 percent. He did it against Golden State in fewer minutes than normal, while hearing boos from the Oracle crowd every time he touched the ball. (Sidenote: if you can figure out why Warriors fans still boo him, let me know.)
It’s telling that the Bucks kept rolling along with Ilyasova out of the lineup, even if Golden State isn’t the class of the West. Ilyasova is the Eastern Conference Player of the Week and has been putting up monster numbers lately, but he doesn’t function like a traditional star. Milwaukee doesn’t run a ton of ISO plays for him; rather, he gets his points by moving into open spaces and crashing the glass. Per Basketball-Reference.com, only eight players  boast a higher offensive rebounding percentage than Ilyasova this year. Mbah a Moute was able to pick up the slack in that area Friday night and ended up with the same kind of ridiculous numbers we’ve been seeing from Ilyasova.
A lot of people still think of Scott Skiles’ Bucks as a defense-first team, but this season they’re 11th in offensive efficiency and just 22nd on defense. They’re one of the best passing teams in the league, fourth-best at assists per possession per TeamRankings.com. “We have a lot of good chemistry inside the team,” said Ilyasova after a recent win. ”Everybody trusts each other… When they make the extra pass, you have to trust the teammate to make the shot. It’s the kind of thing we’re really good at.”
“It’s kind of been really easy for me right now,” Ilyasova continued. “Hopefully we’re going to make the playoffs together.”
The Bucks are averaging 31.8 assists a game in their last five games. They’re eighth in the East, tied with the Knicks with a record of 20-24. Going forward, the challenge is to integrate the new guys without losing any of the chemistry that brought them into the playoff picture. It’s fair to worry about how Ilyasova will fit in with Ellis needing the needing the ball in his hands, but these performances from Mbah a Moute and Dunleavy show that it doesn’t have to be all backcourt all the time. This is just one game against a team that appears to be tanking, but it’s a good sign.
(Warning: The above video mix features loads of Paul Pierce and-1′s and a few naughty words. NSFW if your workplace doesn’t appreciate Brother Ali or four-letter words.)
When I see Paul Pierce get one of his and-1’s, I have to laugh. Almost always, he initiates the contact. After the play, the defender looks disgusted — a combination of “pissed off at the ref†and “disappointed in myself.†As Pierce poses, high-fives somebody, or pounds his chest before he steps to the line, I get a little annoyed. Then I think, “that MF’er again†and laugh.
Pierce is like that college professor who’s been around forever and likes the sound of his own voice too much. The guy who will lecture you forever, refer to his own work constantly, and go right back at anyone who challenges one of his opinions. And you won’t challenge his opinion because you know he’ll probably make you look stupid. You’ll resent him at first, but you’ll come to respect the hell out of his knowledge and the amount of work he put into forming those still kind of annoyingly strong opinions.
If I was writing a book about Paul Pierce, it would center on how he evolved from a young, stubborn kid from LA to a legitimate Hall of Famer and NBA Finals MVP. Of all the athletes I’ve covered, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone turn it around the way Paul did.
Via Q&A With Jackie McMullan | CelticsBlog, 10/31/2010
You don’t have to cheer for Pierce or his team. You don’t have to love his cockiness or his veteran tricks. But you have to respect the man’s journey. You have to admire the way he changed his game. He’s too damn effective, deceptive, and fundamentally sound to hate. Sure, you’d absolutely loathe having to guard anyone like him, but you may as well appreciate the savvy old MF’er.
In this installment of Have Ball, Will Travel, we’ll take a closer look at Deron Williams’ half-court heave from last night’s game between the Jazz and Blazers, and wreck some dreams long the way. Roll the tape:
Sadly, Deron William’s buzzer-beater seems to be a clear-cut travel. He establishes his right foot as a pivot foot, pivots through two defenders, and then lifts his pivot foot to give him an illegal step-through. What’s odd is that the rulebook doesn’t explicitly say that this is a violation. Here’s the relevant passage:
If a player, with the ball in his possession, raises his pivot foot off the floor, he must pass or shoot before his pivot foot returns to the floor.
Deron technically shoots before his pivot returns to the floor, considering he’s stepping out of his pivot rather than jumping off of it. There really isn’t any clear language in the rulebook on this type of step-through, which takes us on a fun trip down the way of writer’s intent. Reading a rulebook shouldn’t be like constitutional law, but in this case, we have little choice. Technically, a player could go up for a jumper out of a pivot, and come back down with the ball so long as he lands on his non-pivot foot. However, such a play is — and should be — an obvious travel. It’s just not specifically outlined in the rulebook, and the wording used doesn’t expressly forbid it.
However, given the nature of this play and the specific advantage Deron gained by lifting his pivot and taking an additional step (Ed. note: gained advantage is how the rulebook determines traveling in other cases), it’s a violation of the intent of the rule, if not the rule itself.
EDIT: The esteemed John Schuhmann of NBA.com disagrees wholeheartedly with my assessment. If for some reason you’re not already following him on Twitter, you can read his comments @johnschuhmann (search @robmahoney for comments specific to this call). Schuhmann definitely has a valid point, but I still have a hard time letting go of this as walk. Let’s open the phones; I’m sticking by this one as a travel, but what do you think?
In this installment of Have Ball, Will Travel, we’ll re-run a play that wasn’t whistled for a violation during last night’s game between the Orlando Magic and the Atlanta Hawks.
It’s common — in social circles consisting of entirely 10 year-olds, anyway — to insist that in the dictionary next to the definition for whatever negative word is most fitting lies a picture of so-and-so. Zing. But seriously: in the NBA’s rulebook under how not to execute a jump stop at the end of a dribble is a video of Hedo Turkoglu. This is pretty much Hedo’s move, and it’s 100% travel.
As far as I can tell, Turkoglu doesn’t really understand the concept of a jump stop. Most notably, he pivots and steps-through following his stop with no regard for traveling rules, and in far too many cases, he gets away with it. The jump stop is among the most poorly officiated areas of the modern NBA game, and Turk is but one player that gets away with violations on jump stops regularly.
In today’s edition of Have Ball, Will Travel, we’ll take a look at one of Kobe Bryant’s highlight-reel plays from yesterday’s game between the Lakers and Raptors:
I don’t know that there’s too much to say here other than that this kind of stuff happens all the time. This exact traveling sequence — the pivot step-back — has been a point of emphasis for officials over the last few seasons, but they can’t catch them all. The shift is too subtle, the players too quick, and the movement too natural. Dig through top play countdowns and game recap videos and you’re sure to find plenty of plays just like this one, fallen through the cracks of the officiating system and yet commemorated as if it were completely legal.
In today’s Have Ball, Will Travel, we have the elusive double-whammy. Two demonstrations of the enforcement of the traveling rule, one correct and one incorrect, coming from Tuesday night’s game between the Phoenix Suns and the Portland Trailblazers.
This first clip is an easy non-call, and the officiating crew judged it correctly. In most casual basketball circles, this would surely be called a travel; the “can’t stand up with the ball” rule is a pretty popular, but in this case incorrect, interpretation of the traveling rule. I’m not exactly sure if this particular rule has evolved over time or if it’s always been misunderstood, but in today’s NBA (and at least as far back as a few years ago, based on the clips used for the NBA Video Rulebook), it’s perfectly legitimate to stand up with the ball, establish a pivot foot, and go about your business.
Now, here’s where things get tricky. Players receiving the ball on the move frequently get a ridiculous free pass on traveling calls, but here the official calls the play tightly…and incorrectly. Here’s the language used in the rulebook:
A player who receives the ball while he is progressing must release the ball to start his dribble before his second step.
The first step occurs when a foot, or both feet, touch the floor after gaining control of the ball. The second step occurs after the first step when the other foot touches the floor, or both feet touch the floor simultaneously.
Alright, pretty straightforward there. Nash clearly receives the ball on the move, though in his usual side gallop rather than a full sprint. If you look carefully, both of Nash’s feet are planted when he gains possession of the ball; it’s hard to see because of his shuffle, but if you watch the movement and angle of his feet, it’s clear that neither one should count as an established step. That makes the plant of Nash’s right foot his “first step” as defined by the rule.
Nash’s “second step” is an insanely close call, but he does indeed release the ball before his second step occurs, as the rule demands. I’ve freeze-framed the video where the ball is out of Nash’s hands while his other foot (which will eventually take that second step) is still in the air. Hard to blame the official for not being able to see that insane bit of detail, but in this case that level of precision would have been necessary to make the correct non-call.
In this installment, we’ll take a look at a wide-open transition opportunity for Dirk Nowitzki during the Dallas Mavericks’ game against the Utah Jazz.
In full disclosure: I originally pulled this clip as an example of a blatant travel that the officiating crew missed. Dirk’s break to the bucket looks like a four-step move, a laughably missed violation. However, slow down the film and things get a bit murkier. How you read this play likely depends on how you interpret the collect/gather rule in the NBA, but if we’re going by the book, Nowitzki actually skirts free of a travel.
I think the rulebook is actually rather explicit on this point: “The first step occurs when a foot, or both feet, touch the floor after gaining control of the ball.” (Ed. note: Emphasis mine.) Gaining control of the ball is the textual equivalent of a gather, which means that steps taken during the gather are not a part of the traveling count. Every player is entitled two steps after gaining control of the ball, and in this clip you can see that Dirk really only takes two steps after his gather.
The first of what I originally perceived as four steps isn’t a step at all; the ball isn’t even in Nowitzki’s hands. The second would be the common interpretation of a gather step, seeing as he doesn’t seem to have control of the ball in his hands before planting that particular foot. Then, the final two paces are those allotted by NBA rules for any player on the move with the ball.
It’s awkward as hell, and at full speed, I’m not sure how anyone could have made that determination; I’m more inclined to think that the refs just let this one go as an uncontested fast break than believe that they made this kind of read on the play. Still, if we entitle players to a collect step (hint: we do) by way of video precedent and the rulebook, this is — somehow — a perfectly legal sequence.
