Killakobe81
12-19-2013, 03:27 PM
What a great piece ... I know it will hurt some posted most of the good stuff:
The best shots remain airborne forever, in driveways and alleys, at parks and YMCAs, amateur imitations of Magic Johnson's junior skyhook over the Celtics, Reggie Miller's turnaround against the Knicks, Michael Jordan's step-back versus the Jazz. They live in dusty old gyms like the one at Santa Monica High, where on a warm November morning, a 64-year-old former professor and Air Force intelligence officer strides across the key to the right corner. He glances down at the strip of hardwood separating the three-point line from the sideline and marvels at how narrow it is. Someone shooting from that corner would have only three feet to leap and land-not much room for a man who is, say, 6' 5" and wears size-15 sneakers. It's like asking a giant to do gymnastics on a wire. "This son of a gun sprints all the way back here, turns his body, gets his balance, takes his time and sets up perfectly," the professor says. "He can't rush it. He has to follow through. And he does it all because he's done it a million times before. He's waited his whole life for this shot." Then Gregg Popovich pantomimes the stroke that broke his heart.
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nba/news/20131218/ray-allen-miami-heat-29-seconds-nba-finals-game-6/#ixzz2nwnF76bp
... He flew to San Francisco with his assistant coaches for their annual summer retreat and dissected the video of Game 6. Miami had won the series in seven games, but it was the sixth that ate at Popovich: The Spurs, 28.2 seconds away from clinching their fifth title in 14 seasons, blew a five-point lead and lost 103-100 in overtime. The video session took seven hours. Popovich then presented the footage to players on the first day of training camp. The Spurs weren't hiding the wound. They were exposing it so it could heal. "I didn't want anybody going into the season thinking, Oh, gosh, we got screwed, the basketball gods took one away from us," Popovich says. "That's bulls---. There's a healthier way to move on. It wasn't just one shot. It was 29 seconds."
:27
Spoelstra sent out a lineup with five three-point shooters, leaving Bosh on the bench. Popovich countered by removing center Tim Duncan. As forward Mike Miller prepared to inbound near the Heat bench, Allen ran across the key, screening Manu Ginóbili and Danny Green to free LeBron James at the top of the circle. James caught the inbounds pass, but Green recovered and contested James's three-point attempt with an outstretched right hand. The shot, as hard and straight as a four-seam fastball, smacked off the bottom right corner of the backboard square. My God, Popovich thought to himself. We're up five and he just shot an air ball. The game might be over.
:25
If James had shot a standard brick, San Antonio forward Kawhi Leonard would have grabbed the rebound in his colossal 9.8-inch mitts and sealed the game at the free throw line. But the shot was so wild Leonard couldn't corral it, and the ball rocketed off his hand and straight in the air. The closest Heat player was guard Dwyane Wade, stuck behind Leonard, giving up three inches and nine years. Wade jumped off his right leg, the one with the bone bruises in the knee that require daily treatment and occasional prayer. "Kawhi has those claws -- his hands are claws -- and you're just doing anything you can to get a fingertip on the ball," Wade says. "I got just enough."
:24
Green was the Finals' breakout star, but here he made a costly mistake. Instead of shadowing James on the left wing, he assumed San Antonio would come away with the loose ball and drifted downcourt. "Most important rebound of the game and we have a player who's backing up," Popovich says. "All he had to do was pick up LeBron."
:23
Royce Young, a reporter for CBSSports.com, was packing up his laptop. Young was sitting at a press table in section 102 and wanted to beat the crowd to the Spurs' locker room. He already had his story. He was going to write about Tracy McGrady, San Antonio's 12th man, finally winning a championship in his 16th season. "I don't blame the Miami fans for leaving," Young says. "I think 29 other teams' fans would have left too. The game was over." Wade's rebound tip bounced off Allen to Miller, who shoveled it back to James.
:22
"I was angry at the fans who left," Allen says. "This is it. This is Game 6. We don't win and it's summer." He saw the ropes, encircling the floor, as a metaphor for his rage. "When you get to the end of your rope," Allen says, "tie a knot."
:21
With Green scrambling back, James elevated on the left wing and buried an open three. "Suddenly the energy in the building totally changed," says Heat general manager Andy Elisburg.
:20
Popovich used his final timeout. Spoelstra told his players which Spurs to foul and what play he would likely call after the ensuing free throws. James nibbled his right thumbnail. Allen swigged a bottle of water.
:19
Duncan extricated his feet from the ropes along the sideline and inbounded to Leonard, who was promptly fouled. Allen waved his arms up and down, begging the crowd for noise, for life. Leonard missed the first free throw. Behind the San Antonio bench a woman in a white tank top and sunglasses waved a red foam finger over the players, like bunny ears. McGrady bowed his head. Leonard made the second: 95-92.
:18
All season the Spurs had taken Duncan out when leading by three late in games because they switch defenders on every pick-and-roll to blanket the three-point line. At 37, he is the slowest of the starters -- and therefore the likeliest to be late on a switch. Duncan, who had 30 points and 16 rebounds, was replaced by Boris Diaw. Bosh, however, was back in for the Heat.
:17
Spoelstra called the play, the one the Heat never run. Point guard Mario Chalmers, who made the buzzer beater that forced overtime for Kansas in the 2008 national championship game, dribbled down the left side.
:16
Allen, like most snipers, didn't grow up shooting corner threes. He only discovered their value once he reached the NBA. The corners yield the highest percentage three-pointers, not only because they're closest to the basket, but also because teams swing the ball around the perimeter, forcing the defense to rotate. The last swing pass, and the last rotation, is to the corner. "I always go to the corner first," Allen says. He jogged down the right side. But he was nothing more than a decoy to space the floor for James.
:15
Chalmers continued all the way to the left elbow. "Some people thought we should foul," Popovich says, though Chalmers shot 79.5% from the line last season. "O.K., so you're three points up and you foul, now it's a one-point game and a free throw shooting contest. And we're one of the worst free throw shooting teams in the league. All we need is a rebound and it's over. I wouldn't give that up for a free throw contest."
:14
A panel of 11 voters, spread around the arena, chose the Finals MVP. NBA staffers radioed the picks to Tim Frank, the league's senior vice president of communications. Frank feverishly tallied the votes on press row so he could relay the result to commissioner David Stern for the trophy presentation ...
:13
Bosh screened point guard Tony Parker on the left wing to clear James at the three-point line, and since San Antonio was switching everything, Diaw picked up James. But San Antonio committed another uncharacteristic error. Instead of switching back onto Bosh, Parker joined Diaw and lunged at James. "It was my job to screen Tony," Bosh says. "When he went under me, I was like, Oh, s---. I thought about screening him again, but I didn't want to pick up the foul." Bosh didn't yet recognize the opportunity Parker had handed him.
:12
"In 2011, the first year this group was together, we had so many failures in late-game situations," Spoelstra says. "We spent an inordinate amount of time fixing them. In 2013, during the 27-game winning streak, we had games where we were down in the fourth quarter and had to storm back. We realized we've been here before."
:11
James fired, Diaw in his face, Parker in his shorts. Bosh had nowhere to go but the rim. "He was all by himself at the top of the key," Popovich says. "He walked right into the lane."
:10
Bosh is no bruiser, but the Heat used him at center in the Finals to keep more shooters on the court. "He was making sacrifices that whole series," says former Miami center Alonzo Mourning, now a member of the team's front office. "He didn't score much, but people don't realize how much he focused on clogging that middle and getting those rebounds."
:09
James missed -- albeit with a lighter touch this time -- and the ball caromed off the left side of the rim. Ginóbili, guarding Allen in the right corner, abandoned him to track the rebound. He got one hand on the ball. Bosh got two. Ideally, the Spurs would have fouled immediately, but Bosh held the ball only for a second, and in that second he noticed something. Ginóbili, the man assigned to the best three-point shooter in NBA history, was falling down.
:08
As a young player in Milwaukee, Allen invented a drill in which he lies in the key, springs to his feet and backpedals to the corner. A coach throws him a pass. He has to catch and shoot without stepping on the three-point line or the sideline. In Allen's first training session with the Heat, just after Labor Day 2012, he performed the drill. "It was the first time I ever saw anybody do that," Spoelstra says. "He told me he does it for offensive rebounding purposes. He said, 'You never know when you'll be in a situation where you have to find the three-point line without looking down.' "
:07
Allen had followed Ginóbili into the key, even though Bosh was in a far better rebounding position. "Get where you need to be!" he told himself. He took five furious steps backward. "CB!" he shouted. "CB!"
"I used to have nightmares about Ray," Elisburg says. "The ball works around the three-point line, and there's Ray, and he's wide open in the corner, and you see it coming in slow motion. Now he plays for us, and it was in slow motion again. You see Chris looking at Ray and Ray running back. It's make or miss, win or lose, live or die. But isn't that the beauty of sports?" Bosh backhanded the ball to Allen. "I wish I'd waited a little bit longer," Bosh says, but John Stockton couldn't have made a better pass. Allen caught it at his rib cage with his right hand, and as he gathered, he took two final steps back over the three-point line. He didn't look down. The next day Frank asked Allen if he knew his size-15s were over the line. "I hoped," he said.
:05
With Ginóbili down, a cavalry of four Spurs charged at Allen, led by Parker. But he wasn't rushing. According to an ESPN Sport Science segment, Allen's average shot release takes .73 of a second. This time he waited a leisurely .83. "If you didn't know the context -- if you took a picture of my positioning, my body, and erased the backdrop -- you'd just say, 'Oh, that's Ray shooting a three-pointer,' " Allen says. "It looked exactly the same."Norris Cole knew first. "I was on the bench, in the opposite corner, so I had the best view of it," says Miami's backup point guard. "That's why I jumped so high." He tracked the flight of the ball, traveling at a 40-degree angle, and leaped three feet in the air. "Rebound Bosh!" Breen said. "Back out to Allen! His three-pointer! Bang!"
A viewing party at the AT&T Center in San Antonio fell silent. "Oh s---!" Heat
At the scorers' table Frank stopped tallying MVP votes ...
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nba/news/20131218/ray-allen-miami-heat-29-seconds-nba-finals-game-6/#ixzz2nxCbmz2T
Again that star wars line comes to mind ... "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced ...
Doesnt matter HOW yall try to spin it ... that was CRUSHING this article does a great job of explaining how it changed things:
More from SI:
"If we don't win that game," he says, "I'm probably not here right now. This locker room is very different." Bosh would be the scapegoat. Spoelstra would be under fire. James would be back in the public crosshairs.
Instead, James won his second straight Finals MVP, and Spoelstra signed a contract extension. They're all kings. "I've been overwhelmed by people who saw that shot," Allen says. "Famous people, regular people, everywhere I go it's all anyone wants to talks about. But it's never really about my making the shot. It's always about where they were."
The reality is as great as Duncan is as great as Pop, Manu Tony were ... THAT shot will live on longer in NBA lore than almost anything. Duncan is the GOAT PF and maybe for a while ...but someone may overtake him. That SHOT those 28.2 seconds will live on in infamy long after. Every June we will see Ray's text book release and Breen's famous call.
The best shots remain airborne forever, in driveways and alleys, at parks and YMCAs, amateur imitations of Magic Johnson's junior skyhook over the Celtics, Reggie Miller's turnaround against the Knicks, Michael Jordan's step-back versus the Jazz. They live in dusty old gyms like the one at Santa Monica High, where on a warm November morning, a 64-year-old former professor and Air Force intelligence officer strides across the key to the right corner. He glances down at the strip of hardwood separating the three-point line from the sideline and marvels at how narrow it is. Someone shooting from that corner would have only three feet to leap and land-not much room for a man who is, say, 6' 5" and wears size-15 sneakers. It's like asking a giant to do gymnastics on a wire. "This son of a gun sprints all the way back here, turns his body, gets his balance, takes his time and sets up perfectly," the professor says. "He can't rush it. He has to follow through. And he does it all because he's done it a million times before. He's waited his whole life for this shot." Then Gregg Popovich pantomimes the stroke that broke his heart.
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nba/news/20131218/ray-allen-miami-heat-29-seconds-nba-finals-game-6/#ixzz2nwnF76bp
... He flew to San Francisco with his assistant coaches for their annual summer retreat and dissected the video of Game 6. Miami had won the series in seven games, but it was the sixth that ate at Popovich: The Spurs, 28.2 seconds away from clinching their fifth title in 14 seasons, blew a five-point lead and lost 103-100 in overtime. The video session took seven hours. Popovich then presented the footage to players on the first day of training camp. The Spurs weren't hiding the wound. They were exposing it so it could heal. "I didn't want anybody going into the season thinking, Oh, gosh, we got screwed, the basketball gods took one away from us," Popovich says. "That's bulls---. There's a healthier way to move on. It wasn't just one shot. It was 29 seconds."
:27
Spoelstra sent out a lineup with five three-point shooters, leaving Bosh on the bench. Popovich countered by removing center Tim Duncan. As forward Mike Miller prepared to inbound near the Heat bench, Allen ran across the key, screening Manu Ginóbili and Danny Green to free LeBron James at the top of the circle. James caught the inbounds pass, but Green recovered and contested James's three-point attempt with an outstretched right hand. The shot, as hard and straight as a four-seam fastball, smacked off the bottom right corner of the backboard square. My God, Popovich thought to himself. We're up five and he just shot an air ball. The game might be over.
:25
If James had shot a standard brick, San Antonio forward Kawhi Leonard would have grabbed the rebound in his colossal 9.8-inch mitts and sealed the game at the free throw line. But the shot was so wild Leonard couldn't corral it, and the ball rocketed off his hand and straight in the air. The closest Heat player was guard Dwyane Wade, stuck behind Leonard, giving up three inches and nine years. Wade jumped off his right leg, the one with the bone bruises in the knee that require daily treatment and occasional prayer. "Kawhi has those claws -- his hands are claws -- and you're just doing anything you can to get a fingertip on the ball," Wade says. "I got just enough."
:24
Green was the Finals' breakout star, but here he made a costly mistake. Instead of shadowing James on the left wing, he assumed San Antonio would come away with the loose ball and drifted downcourt. "Most important rebound of the game and we have a player who's backing up," Popovich says. "All he had to do was pick up LeBron."
:23
Royce Young, a reporter for CBSSports.com, was packing up his laptop. Young was sitting at a press table in section 102 and wanted to beat the crowd to the Spurs' locker room. He already had his story. He was going to write about Tracy McGrady, San Antonio's 12th man, finally winning a championship in his 16th season. "I don't blame the Miami fans for leaving," Young says. "I think 29 other teams' fans would have left too. The game was over." Wade's rebound tip bounced off Allen to Miller, who shoveled it back to James.
:22
"I was angry at the fans who left," Allen says. "This is it. This is Game 6. We don't win and it's summer." He saw the ropes, encircling the floor, as a metaphor for his rage. "When you get to the end of your rope," Allen says, "tie a knot."
:21
With Green scrambling back, James elevated on the left wing and buried an open three. "Suddenly the energy in the building totally changed," says Heat general manager Andy Elisburg.
:20
Popovich used his final timeout. Spoelstra told his players which Spurs to foul and what play he would likely call after the ensuing free throws. James nibbled his right thumbnail. Allen swigged a bottle of water.
:19
Duncan extricated his feet from the ropes along the sideline and inbounded to Leonard, who was promptly fouled. Allen waved his arms up and down, begging the crowd for noise, for life. Leonard missed the first free throw. Behind the San Antonio bench a woman in a white tank top and sunglasses waved a red foam finger over the players, like bunny ears. McGrady bowed his head. Leonard made the second: 95-92.
:18
All season the Spurs had taken Duncan out when leading by three late in games because they switch defenders on every pick-and-roll to blanket the three-point line. At 37, he is the slowest of the starters -- and therefore the likeliest to be late on a switch. Duncan, who had 30 points and 16 rebounds, was replaced by Boris Diaw. Bosh, however, was back in for the Heat.
:17
Spoelstra called the play, the one the Heat never run. Point guard Mario Chalmers, who made the buzzer beater that forced overtime for Kansas in the 2008 national championship game, dribbled down the left side.
:16
Allen, like most snipers, didn't grow up shooting corner threes. He only discovered their value once he reached the NBA. The corners yield the highest percentage three-pointers, not only because they're closest to the basket, but also because teams swing the ball around the perimeter, forcing the defense to rotate. The last swing pass, and the last rotation, is to the corner. "I always go to the corner first," Allen says. He jogged down the right side. But he was nothing more than a decoy to space the floor for James.
:15
Chalmers continued all the way to the left elbow. "Some people thought we should foul," Popovich says, though Chalmers shot 79.5% from the line last season. "O.K., so you're three points up and you foul, now it's a one-point game and a free throw shooting contest. And we're one of the worst free throw shooting teams in the league. All we need is a rebound and it's over. I wouldn't give that up for a free throw contest."
:14
A panel of 11 voters, spread around the arena, chose the Finals MVP. NBA staffers radioed the picks to Tim Frank, the league's senior vice president of communications. Frank feverishly tallied the votes on press row so he could relay the result to commissioner David Stern for the trophy presentation ...
:13
Bosh screened point guard Tony Parker on the left wing to clear James at the three-point line, and since San Antonio was switching everything, Diaw picked up James. But San Antonio committed another uncharacteristic error. Instead of switching back onto Bosh, Parker joined Diaw and lunged at James. "It was my job to screen Tony," Bosh says. "When he went under me, I was like, Oh, s---. I thought about screening him again, but I didn't want to pick up the foul." Bosh didn't yet recognize the opportunity Parker had handed him.
:12
"In 2011, the first year this group was together, we had so many failures in late-game situations," Spoelstra says. "We spent an inordinate amount of time fixing them. In 2013, during the 27-game winning streak, we had games where we were down in the fourth quarter and had to storm back. We realized we've been here before."
:11
James fired, Diaw in his face, Parker in his shorts. Bosh had nowhere to go but the rim. "He was all by himself at the top of the key," Popovich says. "He walked right into the lane."
:10
Bosh is no bruiser, but the Heat used him at center in the Finals to keep more shooters on the court. "He was making sacrifices that whole series," says former Miami center Alonzo Mourning, now a member of the team's front office. "He didn't score much, but people don't realize how much he focused on clogging that middle and getting those rebounds."
:09
James missed -- albeit with a lighter touch this time -- and the ball caromed off the left side of the rim. Ginóbili, guarding Allen in the right corner, abandoned him to track the rebound. He got one hand on the ball. Bosh got two. Ideally, the Spurs would have fouled immediately, but Bosh held the ball only for a second, and in that second he noticed something. Ginóbili, the man assigned to the best three-point shooter in NBA history, was falling down.
:08
As a young player in Milwaukee, Allen invented a drill in which he lies in the key, springs to his feet and backpedals to the corner. A coach throws him a pass. He has to catch and shoot without stepping on the three-point line or the sideline. In Allen's first training session with the Heat, just after Labor Day 2012, he performed the drill. "It was the first time I ever saw anybody do that," Spoelstra says. "He told me he does it for offensive rebounding purposes. He said, 'You never know when you'll be in a situation where you have to find the three-point line without looking down.' "
:07
Allen had followed Ginóbili into the key, even though Bosh was in a far better rebounding position. "Get where you need to be!" he told himself. He took five furious steps backward. "CB!" he shouted. "CB!"
"I used to have nightmares about Ray," Elisburg says. "The ball works around the three-point line, and there's Ray, and he's wide open in the corner, and you see it coming in slow motion. Now he plays for us, and it was in slow motion again. You see Chris looking at Ray and Ray running back. It's make or miss, win or lose, live or die. But isn't that the beauty of sports?" Bosh backhanded the ball to Allen. "I wish I'd waited a little bit longer," Bosh says, but John Stockton couldn't have made a better pass. Allen caught it at his rib cage with his right hand, and as he gathered, he took two final steps back over the three-point line. He didn't look down. The next day Frank asked Allen if he knew his size-15s were over the line. "I hoped," he said.
:05
With Ginóbili down, a cavalry of four Spurs charged at Allen, led by Parker. But he wasn't rushing. According to an ESPN Sport Science segment, Allen's average shot release takes .73 of a second. This time he waited a leisurely .83. "If you didn't know the context -- if you took a picture of my positioning, my body, and erased the backdrop -- you'd just say, 'Oh, that's Ray shooting a three-pointer,' " Allen says. "It looked exactly the same."Norris Cole knew first. "I was on the bench, in the opposite corner, so I had the best view of it," says Miami's backup point guard. "That's why I jumped so high." He tracked the flight of the ball, traveling at a 40-degree angle, and leaped three feet in the air. "Rebound Bosh!" Breen said. "Back out to Allen! His three-pointer! Bang!"
A viewing party at the AT&T Center in San Antonio fell silent. "Oh s---!" Heat
At the scorers' table Frank stopped tallying MVP votes ...
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nba/news/20131218/ray-allen-miami-heat-29-seconds-nba-finals-game-6/#ixzz2nxCbmz2T
Again that star wars line comes to mind ... "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced ...
Doesnt matter HOW yall try to spin it ... that was CRUSHING this article does a great job of explaining how it changed things:
More from SI:
"If we don't win that game," he says, "I'm probably not here right now. This locker room is very different." Bosh would be the scapegoat. Spoelstra would be under fire. James would be back in the public crosshairs.
Instead, James won his second straight Finals MVP, and Spoelstra signed a contract extension. They're all kings. "I've been overwhelmed by people who saw that shot," Allen says. "Famous people, regular people, everywhere I go it's all anyone wants to talks about. But it's never really about my making the shot. It's always about where they were."
The reality is as great as Duncan is as great as Pop, Manu Tony were ... THAT shot will live on longer in NBA lore than almost anything. Duncan is the GOAT PF and maybe for a while ...but someone may overtake him. That SHOT those 28.2 seconds will live on in infamy long after. Every June we will see Ray's text book release and Breen's famous call.