Looking At Dallas’ Final Possession
After Chris Bosh’s shot along the baseline and an empty possession by each team, the Dallas Mavericks found themselves with the basketball, down two, and coming out of their final timeout with 4.4 seconds left. Mavericks’ coach Rick Carlisle ran a play using Peja Stojakovic as a decoy, trying to set up Jason Terry in the corner for a three point shot. However, with Dallas rushing and a fantastic defensive play by Dwyane Wade, they were forced to go to their second option (a damn good one) which was Dirk Nowitzki at the top of the key. With Udonis Haslem covering him, Nowitzki was forced into a miss.
The play starts with Peja Stojakovic coming off of two separate screens along the baseline, one from Dirk Nowitzki and one from Tyson Chandler. Stojakovic uses these screens as if he is flaring out towards the corner.
Instead of heading to the corner, Stojakovic curls around Chandler’s screen and starts heading back towards where he came from. As this is taking place, Jason Terry sets a pindown screen for Nowitzki in the middle of the lane. Nowitzki uses it and gets to the weakside elbow.
After setting his pindown screen, Jason Terry comes off of a screen in the corner. The design of the play was having a shooter (Peja Stojakovic) clearing out to the weakside forcing Dwyane Wade to follow him out there. That would clear the corner for Jason Terry, as LeBron James was too occupied hedging on Dirk to stay attached on Terry’s hip.
The one problem is that Dwyane Wade does a fantastic job of reading the play. Instead of chasing Stojakovic to the opposite side of the court, Wade calls out a switch and just sprints to the corner, going over the screen.
Chandler shifts (and sets a moving screen) to try and get a screen on Wade, but the job is already done. With Wade going over the top, he basically takes the pass to Terry away. Before LeBron James returns to Stojakovic he is open for a split second, but Chalmers is doing such a great job pressuring the ball, there is no way Kidd can make that pass. This forces Nowitzki, acting as the safety valve to step up and make himself available for the pass.
Nowitzki makes the catch out by the three point line, takes one dribble and tries to execute his patented spin move into a fade away jumper.
Haslem slips while trying to stay with Nowitzki, and that results in Nowitzki pump faking, trying to draw Haslem off balance. However, Haslem does a fantastic job of not biting or jumping on the pump fake and simply keeping his hands up. Nowitzki gets the shot off, but that is about as good as you can defend Nowitzki in this situation. Here is the play in real time, with a slow motion clip right after:
A couple things here. First, the Dallas Mavericks were going for the win in my opinion. It looks like Terry was the first option here, with Carlisle looking to set him up for the three in the corner. Also, the Mavericks looked a little rushed here. Maybe it was the fact they knew they had no timeouts left and they had to get the ball in, but they just looked as if they just wanted to get the ball in, and it cost Dallas in terms of execution (I don’t think there is one strong screen set here).
While Dallas didn’t run the play to perfection, you can’t just blame them. Miami had a role in this stop as there are two great individual plays here. First, Wade’s recognition and switch is fantastic (the slow motion really allows you to see the switch). Second, Haslem does a great job of simply holding his ground, getting big, and not biting on any fakes, allowing him to contest the shot to the best of his ability.
