Mavericks’ Game Winning Lob With 0.4 Seconds Left
In the preseason, coaches have to love situations like the Dallas Mavericks’ were in last night. Down by 1 point with 0.4 seconds left, Rick Carlisle needed to draw up a play for the Mavs to get a quick shot at the basket. The reason why coaches love these type of situations in the preseason, because they get to work on their late game plays against a live defense when the result doesn’t really matter. Meaning they get to see what works and what doesn’t against defenses that don’t know the play is coming (you can work on these type of plays in practice, but you never really know if they will work or not because the defense you are running them against a team who knows what the play is).
Rick Carlisle and the Dallas Mavericks may have found a play (or at least an aspect of it) that works:
Before we look at the playcall, we need to look at something the Rockets did. They took their center, Yao Ming, out of the paint and put him on the inbounder, Jason Kidd. Now some people may not like taking their 7 footer out of the paint when it is obvious the opposing team needs a lob pass, but I like this move. This forces the inbounder to complete a really tough pass.
As for what the Mavericks are doing, you have Jason Terry using a screen to come along the baseline and curl towards the basketball. As this happens, you have Shawn Marion curling around Dirk Nowitzki.
