Thursday, May 7th, 2009...10:19 am
The Best Moments of the 08-09 Season: Mason’s 3 to Beat the Suns on Christmas Day
I was back home in Austin, Texas, in the living room with my father, sitting beneath the recently pilaged Christmas tree and drinking a Shiner. My father and I, who had been jovially discussing the game, fell silent after a well-designed inbounds play concluded in an effortless Grant Hill layup and a 2-point lead for Phoenix.
Like nearly every other person watching the game, I had the sneaking suspicion a corner 3 was in the cards. The Suns…how should I put this…lack discpline on the defensive end of the floor. They are both impulsive and half-hearted, a combination that practically ensures a driving player can collapse the D while still having the space to pass out to his shooters.
In this play, both Amare Stoudemire and Jason Richardson float somewhere in between their man and the ball. Richardson took a lot of heat for leaving Mason but, in actuality, he never committed to the coverage in the first place. Once Mason slid past Manu’s pick in the paint, Richardson never completely followed him to the corner.
This play might not work as effectively against more sophisticated defensive teams. Against a team like the Hornets, for instance, the inbounds pass would have been more thoroughly contested, defenders would have stayed home on their shooters and it would have most likely ended with Parker attempting to tie the game with a well-guarded layup. That’s why we didn’t run this play against the Hornets. (Well, that and we needed a 3 to tie against NOLA).
And yes, like every other moment so far, this ended with me jumping out of my seat and screaming. What can I say? I’m excitable.
9 Comments
May 7th, 2009 at 11:34 am
I was driving to S.A. from Austin during this game, so I had to listen to it on the XM radio, which always features the home team’s commentators. I will never forget long pause that followed the Phx radio voice’s description “… kicks it out to Mason… and he makes the shot.” Both my wife and I are screaming at the radio display, “Was it a 2 or a 3?? Are we headed to OT??” for a good 10 seconds… And then finally he comes back with, “And San Antonio has won the game.” (at which point we erupted). Classic!
May 7th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Unrelated, but I just wanted to express my gratification for this blog. I have appreciated it ever since I found it, but checking out other blogs really puts it in perspective. Graydon, Tim, and all else who comment here always have insightful, constructive things to say. I’ve checked out a lot of other blogs, some good and some horrendously deplorable (I won’t name names), and this is BY FAR the best one. Keep it up everybody!
May 7th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
NickyDubs,
We feel the same way about our commenters.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Graydon,
Ditto on the blog props. You guys are great. Praise is well deserved.
This probably isn’t the right place for it, but I was wondering how you felt about last night’s Houston/LA game. I was reading the Lakers’ corresponding TrueHoop network blog, and I was not at all surprised to find the writer praising LA’s “toughness,” as manifested by Fisher’s cheap shot (and some Kobe elbows, for good measure).
My mind instantly returns to my reaction at the infamous “Cheap Shot Rob” of the classic Spurs/Suns series. I remember feeling the exact same way about Horry as the Lakers writer did (about Fisher, not the elbow). Horry’s was a good foul, but he absolutely, 100% deserved his punishment from the league. I’m not sure I hear that qualifier from Lakers fans, but maybe I’m wrong. (And I certainly didn’t hear it from Celtics fans.) Am I giving myself too much credit as a Spurs fan?
So I guess my question is, how do you feel about expressing “toughness” in such a manner? It is, after all, playoff season, and fouls like a Rondo pimp hand to Miller’s grill can change a whole series, as Spurs fans know intimately well. But shouldn’t we at least acknowledge the necessity of a suspension? Just wondering.
***
Oh, and if you feel like responding and throwing this in, too, should Kobe be suspended if an elbow was indeed thrown at Artest’s neck? You know, a basic letter vs. intent question. Yada, yada, yada.
May 7th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Oh, and one thing about the actual topic of this post. It was only my family’s second Christmas without my grandmother, who was a die-hard Spurs fan, when that classic went down.
My grandmother literally loved the Spurs so much that she often could not watch the games. She would record them, and go sit outside on her chair or cook in the kitchen, only to return to the game and watch it in peace — after the phone calls, after the box score, after the joy, after the anguish. But she would always watch the games. (And then go to mass, of course.) She would get mad at us if we missed them!
It’s still weird to be with my family watching a game without her there, but last Christmas, it got a little easier. We all yelled and jumped on couches and spilled our drinks — everything she would not have done. She would have certainly rolled her eyes at us, but we all knew grandma would have watched that game all the way through. No pauses. No stepping out. No cooking. Just an old woman enjoying her favorite team.
It’s moments like those that make you a fan forever.
May 7th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
That it was against Shaq &the Suns made for a perfect Christmas gift. I imagine it’s quite difficult for players to focus & play well on that holiday, especially on the road. I had to follow the 4th quarter on my phone; being a CA guy, no radio. Seeing the “refresh” come back with us up 1 and “end of 4th quarter” was tremendous.
Caleb, I too would like to know thoughts about last night’s LA-Houston game, as it relates to physicality and league discipline. For once our team is not being subjected to “dirty” accusations and it’s interesting to hear fans, especially Lakers or Celtics, who’ve claimed that in the past now defend their own teams. IMO, toughness is not something you show through antics or words. The reason LA did not and I believe will not win the title is that outside of Kobe and Fisher, they have no players who have proven mental toughness at this stage of the season. That gets exposed in the playoffs and is why I will always believe we would’ve beaten them last season had Manu been healthy. LA is a bit of a front-runner that needs things to come easy. Last night’s over-compensating showed a lack of toughness that is not part of their DNA. It’s their biggest vulnerability. Only a few teams can expose it and they’re usually found in later series, such as Houston. Sadly, missing some of that in our role players this postseason contributed to the early exit.
May 7th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
First and foremost, thanks for all the kind words.
As far as the “tough” play we’ve seen recently, It’s something I’ve thought a lot about but I’m not positive where I stand. Part of me appreciates dirty/tough postseason play: For the victim’s fans, it stokes the fires of righteous indignation. For the offender’s fans, it is an act of defiance. Although it can be tiresome, that partisan intensity is part of what makes the playoffs so great.
But I have never felt that viciousness and sportsmanship are mutually exclusive, especially at the professional level.
As far as my concrete reaction to the suspensions handed (or not handed) out, I think the NBA has done a reasonably good job this postseason. The one exception is when Rondo threw Hinrich into the boards: In my opinion that was obviously a flagrant 2 and should have been a 1 game suspension.
As far as what went down last night, I believe everyone got what they deserved.
Either way, this is an interesting topic, especially for Spurs fans, and I’ll probably return to it in a full post sometime soon. Thanks for bringing it up.
.
May 10th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Watching this still makes me smile and laugh… definitively one of the best plays of the season…
May 12th, 2009 at 11:42 am
I actually attended this game. I live in the valley of the sun but am a die hard Spurs fan. This game was classic. We were down 11-0 but I wasn’t worried, and to see the life go out of the crowd like it did was probably the best part of my Christmas day in 08.
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