Before we get to criticizing J.J. Redick, we do have to give him credit for crashing the boards as soon as KG releases the basketball on his attempt.  With Boston worried about the fast break, they only send two guys in for the rebound, and they are effectively boxed out.  Redick is uncontested as he attacks the rebound.

When I first saw the play, I thought Redick simply lost track of time and thought there was less time then there actually was.  However, this screenshot tells us that Redick knew exactly how much time was left since he took a split second to look at the clock.

Redick quickly takes off as both Stan Van Gundy and Vince Carter try to get the referee’s attention and call a timeout.  The refs aren’t looking in their direction though because they are watching Redick dribble towards midcourt.

Now if you are going to go without calling timeout that’s not the worst decision in the world.  You catch the defense off guard and they don’t have time to get the matchup they want, leading to a ton of cross-matches.  However, once you make that decision to go, you can’t stop.  Especially behind half court, and that is what Redick does here.

To make matters worse, he doesn’t call timeout right away and he allows another 2 seconds run off the clock.

Why is this all so important?  Well, in the NBA if you don’t advance the ball after getting a rebound and before you call a timeout, you have the ability to choose to inbound the basketball at halfcourt.  However, if you do advance the basketball, you have to inbound it from where you call timeout.  The Magic now have to inbound the basketball from about 3/4 court instead of halfcourt.  Here is the resulting play.

As you can see Rashard Lewis finds himself open for a split second, but it is such a long pass, J.J. Redick doesn’t even attempt it.  Instead, he passes it to Jameer Nelson who takes a runner from halfcourt.

Now, the video starts when Devin Harris takes the foul to give with 6.9 seconds left in the third quarter.  This is after he hit a jumper to cut the Grizzlies lead down to two points (After they were down 16 to start the half).  The Grizzlies re-enter the ball, and end up scoring as time runs out.  Yes, the foul is early, but the biggest problem here is where the foul takes place, right around half court.  Mike Conley isn’t a threat out there, so if Devin Harris was to allow him to dribble it down to the three point line or deeper in, it could have taken another 2 to 3 seconds off the clock.  The mistake ended up giving the Grizzlies a two point lead and taking away all the momentum from New Jersey.  Memphis also scored the first basket of the fourth quarter, so you had a 2 point game quickly jump back up to a 6 point game because of the foul.

This is what leads us to the second play.  The Nets are down 5 points with 12.2 seconds left, and after Devin Harris hits a free-throw, it is obvious that the Nets are going to try and foul.

I know that most teams try and deny the inbounds pass, but I think that is the wrong play here.  In this situation, you want to get the foul as quickly as possible.  Sure a turnover is fine, but in most cases you aren’t going to be able to force one, so you should play behind your man, let him make the catch, and foul him before too much time runs off.  Instead, Terrence Williams gambles for the steal, allowing 5 seconds to run off of the clock.  The worst part is Terrence has no chance of making this steal, and even if he gets his hands on it, he is just going to be smacking it out of bounds.  The worst part is that Rudy Gay ended up missing one of two foul shots allowing for it to still be a two possession game, but with under 8 seconds left, all hope was basically lost.

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..