In addition to Talkhoops and Cowbell Kingdom (The TrueHoop Network’s Kings blog), Zach Harper is now writing every Thursday over at RaptorsRepublic (The TrueHoop Network’s Raptors blog). Yesterday, Zach did a great job of breaking down the Raptors’ comeback against the Hawks. Here is a tiny sample:
The recipe of a comeback has to have a couple of essential parts in no particular order. You usually need:
- A little bit of luck
- Multiple defensive stops
- Some offensive execution
- A fortunate occurrence
- Some late-game heroics
Go back in the history of every comeback in the NBA and you’ll see this same recipe. Actually, don’t go back and check on that. It doesn’t always happen. But it does happen often and it certainly happened for the Raptors on Wednesday night. Let’s check out what happened.
The first part of the comeback happened with about 1:15 left in the game with the Hawks up 105-101. Here’s how the recipe played out from here:
There is a lot of great stuff here, so yeah, definitely check it out.
What makes the Magic so dangerous late in games is that they have so many options. You have Vince Carter, Dwight Howard, and Rashard Lewis for starters. Late in overtime against the Heat, all three played a pretty important role in taking a 3 point lead and making it 6.
The Magic run Vince Carter off of a screen set by Dwight Howard. Dwight is going to roll straight to the rim after setting the screen.
As Dwight starts his roll, Carter returns to the side he was on before he set the screen. Michael Beasley ends up sinking in the middle, to help defend Dwight Howard on the roll.
As Vince Carter rises up to pass, Michael Beasley is actually bodied up with Howard, and Jermaine O’Neal is stuck in no man’s land at the top of the key. That means that there is no defender near Rashard Lewis.
As Rashard Lewis rises up to shoot the three, you are left to wonder who made the mistake here. Was Michael Beasley’s help designed, or did he do it on his own? I tend to believe that he did it on his own because if this was schemed there would be at least some rotation to Lewis, but there is none.
As I said at the start of the post, this is what makes the Magic so dangerous. You have a very, very, very good big man in Dwight Howard that teams need to pay attention to. Then you have 4 guys who can knock down an outside shot, and that forces the defense to make a decision. Who are they going to leave to double Dwight. Here, they picked Rashard Lewis and ended up paying for it.
