Last night the Minnesota Timberwolves and Charlotte Bobcats were locked in a tight game.  The Timberwolves were up 1 with under 10 seconds left, and they were able to get the shot they want (a Boris Diaw 21 footer), however the rebound bounces off two Timberwolves and heads out of bounds.  This is where Cory Brewer does something you are taught not to do in high school:

He save the ball under his own basket.  Now, you can’t knock the hustle that Corey Brewer shows here, but there are other options he has.  Instead of throwing it blindly underneath his own he could throw it away from the basket, into the corner (where there was a teammate).  With around 5 seconds left, he can also just heave it as far as he can down the court and hope that time runs out (I understand this might have been difficult to do based on his body position).

His final option is eating the basketball and taking it out of bounds with him.  Now that doesn’t sound like a smart idea, but think about it, would you rather set up your defense to try to get another stop or would you rather keep the ball in bounds as two of your teammates are falling out of bounds?  By eating the basketball and going out of bounds with it, he is putting his team in a better position to win.

Now, here is another example.  This is from the Nets-Celtics game last week:

The ball gets saved by Devin Harris as he is going out of bounds.  By saving the ball on his own end like that, he is basically taking himself out of the play, and the Celtics are able to use this to get a wide open back-breaking jump shot..