Basketball (And Other Things)

by Shea Serrano

  Holdonasecond. You’re telling me that if Nick Anderson had made one of those four free throws, we’d have all ended up seeing Patrick Ewing’s dick? That’s what you’re telling me?

  That’s exactly what I’m telling you.

  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

  I suppose that depends entirely on whether or not you are pro–Patrick Ewing’s dick or anti–Patrick Ewing’s dick.

  That’s fair. So what’s the tally? Where are we right now in this Nick-Anderson-Makes-A-Free-Throw version of the universe?

  To this point: The Magic win the 1995 championship; Shaq stays in Orlando and he and Penny win three titles together; Hakeem Olajuwon does Kazaam, which vibrates out into Hollywood massively; Jordan wins five titles instead of six and his legacy isn’t as guaranteed as it is now;12 Kobe possibly wins two titles instead of five but probably actually wins zero; Duncan wins six titles instead of five; Chris Webber gets a ring (hooray!) but so does Dwight Howard (boooooooo!); Carmelo makes a Finals; we get LeBron vs. Kobe in an NBA Finals Game 7, which LeBron wins, which means he never goes to Miami; and everyone sees Patrick Ewing’s dick. All if Nick Anderson makes one of those free throws.

  1. Shaq, Penny Hardaway, Nick Anderson, Dennis Scott, Horace Grant, Brian Shaw.

  2. I mean this as far as the players go (Shaq and Penny, the team’s two best players, were both 23), but also in relation to the franchise (it was only in its sixth season of existence).

  3. This is according to Inpredictable.com’s Win Probability Calculator.

  4. Following the 1996 season, the Magic didn’t make it out of the first round of the playoffs for 12 years, and five of those years they didn’t make the playoffs at all.

  5. A neat little note: Nick Anderson was actually the very first pick that the Orlando Magic ever made. They drafted him 11th in 1989.

  6. By two seasons after the missed free throws, Anderson’s free throw percentage plummeted from 70 percent to 40 percent.

  7. How unlikely was the formation of that championship-caliber Magic team? The Magic not only had to win the number-one overall pick two years in a row to get there (they drafted Shaq with the 1992 pick; they had a 1/66 chance of winning the number-one pick in 1993), but they also had to be lucky/smart/dumb enough to trade Chris Webber, who was their number-one pick in 1993, for Penny Hardaway (and three first-round draft picks).

  8. The defining play of that series also happened in Game 1 and also involved Nick Anderson, though his role in it was philosophically the exact opposite of his role in the Rockets Game 1 disaster: The Magic were down by one with 18 seconds left in Game 1. Anderson, guarding Michael Jordan, was able to poke the ball away from him, leading to a game-winning basket from Horace Grant.

  9. Or the Nets. The Nets really wanted to draft him with the eighth pick that year. They were warned against it since he wanted to get to Los Angeles once he heard Jerry West wanted to trade Vlade for the pick to get him. The Lakers don’t trade Vlade if Shaq never leaves Orlando, though.

  10. Their roster that season: Rafael Addison, Muggsy Bogues, Scott Burrell, Tom Chambers, Dell Curry, Tony Delk, Jamie Feick, Matt Geiger, Anthony Goldwire, Eric Leckner, Anthony Mason, Ricky Pierce, Glen Rice, Malik Rose, Donald Royal, Tony Smith, and George Zidek. The five names italicized there are big white guys. Five big white guys is way too many big white guys to have on a team hoping to win a title in the mid-to-late ’90s and beyond.

  11. Vlade says it was Jerry West who talked him into going to Charlotte rather than retiring.

  12. Thinking about Jordan with only five championships is somehow the weirdest part of this whole thing.

  WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MOMENT BEFORE “THE MOMENT”?

  PART 1 (1986–1991)

  At the end of Game 5 of the 2004 Western Conference Semifinals between the Lakers and the Spurs, Derek Fisher used every bit of the last 0.4 second left on the clock to hit a buzzer beater that gave the Lakers a one-point win and a 3–2 lead in the series. Do you know what happened on the play immediately before that? I do. I’ll never forget it.

  From 1999 to 2003, only either the Spurs or the Lakers won the NBA championship. And with the exception of 2000, each time they did so they had to go through the other team to get there.1 It went like this:

  • The Spurs sweep the Lakers in the Western Conference Semifinals on their way to winning the championship in 1999, the first in franchise history.2

  • The Lakers sweep the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals on their way to winning the championship in 2001.

  • The Lakers beat the Spurs 4–1 in the Western Conference Semifinals on their way to winning the 2002 championship.

  • The Spurs beat the Lakers 4–2 in the Western Conference Semifinals on their way to winning the 2003 championship.

  So what I’m saying is, by the time the Spurs and the Lakers met in the playoffs in 2004, they proper did not like each other, as tends to happen when one team plays another team 48 times in a six-season period. That’s why I remember what happened before Fisher’s 0.4 shot in 2004 so clearly.

  There was a little less than six seconds to go and the Spurs, who’d had a 2–0 series lead and were now staring at a potential 2–3 hole with Game 6 to come in Los Angeles, were down by one and inbounding the ball. Whatever the inbounds play was got blown up by the Lakers, and so, too, did the backup play, because Tim Duncan ended up 20 feet from the basket with the ball in his hands and Shaq’s massive monster truck body hanging all over him. He took two dribbles to his left, then threw up a goofy, ill-advised, impossible, falling-down fadeaway over Shaq from the top of the key. And that bitch heat-seeking missile’d right through the net.

  I was in college at the time and my mom and dad were in town visiting and so my dad and I were watching the game together and when that shot went in we both started jumping and screaming and JUMPING and SCREAMING. I was so overcome with emotion that I shoved him in the chest as hard as I could because that’s just what my heart was telling me to do. It was great. It was so great. It was so, so great. And, I mean, the game and the stakes and the history and all of that stuff made it great, for sure, but the fact my dad and I were watching it together and experiencing that same set of emotions together is what I really remember. It was the exact kind of sentimental moment you hope to have when you’re a sports fan. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful. It was so, so beautiful. And then it all got washed away.

  Somehow, with just that 0.4 second left, Derek Fisher managed to catch an inbounds pass from Gary Payton, turn around, have himself a sip of tea, then toss up a prayer of a shot to heaven, and so of course God grabbed it and dropped it gently through the basket. It was devastating. The Lakers won the game and then closed out the series the next game.3 That Tim Duncan shot was set to be one of, say, the top-five favorite basketball moments of my life, and it got disappeared just like that.

  But so this three-part series of chapters is about that. It’s about the moments that happened before The Moment, because I think those are just as nerd-interesting. As a matter of fence building, let’s only rewind some of the big-time playoff moments (playoff moments are always more intense and impactful and memorable), and also let’s start with Ralph Sampson’s iconic buzzer-beater tip shot in the 1986 Western Conference Finals (going back through more than 30 years of plays seems like more than enough).

  THE MOMENT: 1986 Playoffs // Western Conference Finals // Rockets vs. Lakers // Game 5 // Series: 3–1, Rockets // Score: 112–112 // 1 second left // Rodney McCray, inbounding the ball from half court, threw it in to Ralph Sampson. Sampson caught the ball, then flipped it up over his shoulder before even landing. The ball bounced off the front of the rim, then the back of the rim, then all the rest of the parts of the rim, then fell through the hoop, winning the series for the Rockets.

  THE MOMENT BEFORE “THE MOMENT”: Byron Scott missed a wide-open 20-foot jumper. Five things here:

  1. Sampson’s shot sent the Rockets to the Finals for only the second time in franchis
e history. The first time they went was 1981. They lost in six games to the Celtics there, same as what happened in the 1986 Finals.

  2. The Lakers were the defending champs. They’d beaten Boston the year before and had lost to Boston the year before that, so most everyone was very excited about a potential third meeting in a row between the Celtics and the Lakers. (The Lakers ended up winning the title in 1987 and 1988. Bird’s Celtics never won another championship after 1986.)

  3. That Rockets team (Olajuwon, Sampson, McCray, Lucas4) absolutely should’ve been good-to-great for the next decade. Injuries and drugs pulled them apart at the seams, though. Just 18 months after Sampson’s shot, he was traded to the Warriors. By the time Olajuwon got the Rockets back to the Finals in 1994, he was the only player on the team who remained from that 1986 squad.

  4. Olajuwon had gotten tossed out of the game in the fourth quarter for fighting Mitch Kupchak. There’s not a bunch of stuff I like thinking about more than Hakeem Olajuwon in a fistfight.5

  5. In situations like these—where a player missed a shot before someone else on the other team hit a game-winning shot or a series-winning shot—I always wonder if it matters to the person who missed the shot whether or not the other team eventually went on to win the championship. Like, do you root for the team who beat you to win the championship because then you can say you at least lost to the best team that year? Or do you want them to not win the championship because you don’t want someone to be able to point back to your miscue and say that it was your mess-up that sent them on their way to a title? I vote that I don’t want a team to win a championship after they beat me.

  THE MOMENT: 1987 Playoffs // Eastern Conference Finals // Pistons vs. Celtics // Game 5 // Series: 2–2 // Score: 107–106, Pistons // 5 seconds left // Isiah Thomas attempted to inbound the ball on the Celtics side of the floor to Bill Laimbeer. Larry Bird jumped the passing lane, stole the ball, then passed it to a cutting Dennis Johnson. DJ made the layup, giving the Celtics a one-point lead with less than a second left on the clock. The Pistons failed to even get a shot off on their final possession, losing 108–107.

  THE MOMENT BEFORE “THE MOMENT”: The Celtics had the ball. Larry Bird inbounded it to Dennis Johnson.6 Bird ran a flair screen and received the ball back from DJ. Rick Mahorn was guarding Bird. (Rick Mahorn was a fucking perfect name for Rick Mahorn.) They were both at the left wing three-point line. Bird gave a jab step to his right, then cut back left around Mahorn, angling his body toward the rim. He had Mahorn beat and also had Isiah Thomas beat (Thomas had cheated over to try and block the layup). It was a great play and should’ve resulted in a layup. It didn’t, though. Because Dennis Rodman, an all-world defender who was guarding a separate player on the opposite end of the court, recognized what was happening and teleported through space like Nightcrawler, appearing at the rim to block Bird’s shot back out to the three-point line. Jerry Sichting chased the ball down and tried to throw it off a Piston player before it went out of bounds. He wasn’t able to, though. The ball went out of bounds off him. So the Pistons had the ball, up one, with five seconds left. All Isiah had to do was inbound it.7

  THE MOMENT: 1987 Playoffs8 // NBA Finals // Lakers vs. Celtics // Game 4 // Series: 2–1, Lakers // Score: 105–106, Celtics // 7 seconds left // Magic Johnson hit a running baby hook over Kevin McHale and Robert Parish to give the Lakers the lead with two seconds left. The Lakers end up winning the game, taking a 3–1 lead in the series.

  THE MOMENT BEFORE “THE MOMENT”: Let’s go back two plays:

  1. On the play immediately preceding the baby hook, the Lakers actually had the ball. They were down two and Kareem had gotten fouled and so he was shooting free throws. He made the first and missed the second, but Kevin McHale ended up knocking the ball out of bounds while he was trying to grab the rebound.9 If he grabs that rebound, there’s no telling how the rest of that series plays out.10 Maybe the Celtics win after they take Game 4?11

  2. The Celtics possession prior to the baby hook was beautiful. It started with Robert Parish setting a pick on Dennis Johnson’s man (Magic Johnson), which forced Kareem to switch out onto DJ on the perimeter and Magic to switch down onto Parish in the post. DJ threw the ball down to Parish, and that’s when everything turned to ash for the Lakers. Kareem ran back to help an undersized Magic, Parish passed the ball back out to DJ, both Michael Cooper and Magic panicked and ran out at DJ, DJ tossed it to a wide-open Danny Ainge, and then Ainge whipped it over to an even more wide-open Bird in the corner. It was a perfectly executed play. It was like the last 10 minutes of a season of Breaking Bad when all of the season’s threads get braided together to form a noose around an unsuspecting someone’s neck. It was real cool. And Magic Johnson baby hook’d it into the ether.

  THE MOMENT: 1989 Playoffs // Eastern Conference First Round // Cavs vs. Bulls // Game 5 // Series: 2–2 // Score: 99–100, Cavs // 3 seconds left // Michael Jordan hit “The Shot,” a free throw line jumper at the buzzer over Craig Ehlo that gave the Bulls a one-point win and sent them to the second round of the playoffs.

  THE MOMENT BEFORE “THE MOMENT”: It was actually a very clutch play by Craig Ehlo, a reserve player for the Cavs who’d had himself a career night. During the 1989 season, Ehlo only averaged 7.4 points per game. That game, though, he put up 24 points, and the last two of them nearly won the series for the Cavs.

  With six seconds left, Ehlo, standing near half court, inbounded the ball to Larry Nance. When Ehlo threw it, his man, Craig Hodges, turned all the way around to look at the ball. Ehlo realized he could get a step on Hodges and broke into a sprint (inasmuch as he could sprint, as he was playing on a sprained ankle). He ran right toward Nance. Nance passed him the ball back and Ehlo slithered his way to the rim, laying it in with just three seconds left, looking for all the world like he’d just won the game for the Cavs, like he’d just sliced the head off Jordan’s shoulders.12 And then: Doom.

  THE MOMENT: 1991 Playoffs // Eastern Conference First Round // Bulls vs. Knicks // Game 3 // Series: 2–0, Bulls // Score: 54–50, Knicks // With less than a minute to go in the first half, Michael Jordan got trapped along the baseline in a double team, pretended to retreat, pivoted back toward the baseline, then mega-dunked on Patrick Ewing, God rest his soul.

  THE MOMENT BEFORE “THE MOMENT”: Kiki VanDeWeghe, who played small forward for the Knicks, shot two free throws. They both went in. Quick aside: I really feel like Kiki VanDeWeghe has way too many capital letters in his name.13 Two seems like the best amount. You can have three if you’re either really outgoing or some sort of superstar. (The exception here is Josh McRoberts. He gets a pass because one time in the playoffs LeBron was driving in for a dunk and so rather than try to block him, McRoberts just fucking hit him with a forearm shiver right in the throat.) Four is just too many.14 When he got to three capital letters one of his friends should’ve been like, “Kiki, you really don’t need that W capitalized, man.”

  THE MOMENT: 1991 Playoffs // NBA Finals // Bulls vs. Lakers // Game 2 // Series: 1–0, Lakers // Score: 71–95, Bulls // With a little under eight minutes left in the game, Michael Jordan received a pass near the top of the key. He charged into the lane, jumped at the rim, then switched hands midair right-to-left for a driving layup. Marv Albert shouted, “Oh! A spec—tacular move by Michael Jordan!”

  THE MOMENT BEFORE “THE MOMENT”: Have you ever seen Deep Impact? It’s a movie where a giant piece of a comet hits Earth and causes an ultra-tsunami that kills millions of people and causes billions and billions of dollars in damage. That’s pretty much what Jordan was during this game. The hand-switch layup actually came at the end of a run where Jordan hit 13 straight shots. It was a real MOMENT. It was some Zeus Throwing Lightning Bolts shit. The play that happened right before it: A.C. Green missed a 17-foot jumper over Horace Grant. (Pretend like the sad noise from The Price Is Right when someone loses a game is playing right now.)

  1. The Lakers won the championship in 2000 but they didn’t play the Spurs in
the playoffs. Tim Duncan tore the lateral meniscus in his left knee with just four games to go in the season. The Spurs made him sit out in the playoffs. As such, they lost in the first round to the too-small Phoenix Suns, who the Lakers blitzed 4–1 in the next round.

  2. Phil Jackson, who was hired to coach the Lakers in June of 1999, said the title deserved an asterisk next to it because it came during the lockout-shortened season. It legit hurt my feelings when he said that.

  3. God bless the 2004 Detroit Pistons for beating the Lakers in the Finals.