I don’t have a problem with him just calling a play out of a side out with ample time. I do have a problem with Smart getting the final shot both at the end of regulation and in OT. I hope someone asks him about that postgame. Better not have been the plan.
The problem with the last play wasn't Marcus' wide open shot (that he made). It was starting the play with two seconds left, despite Philly being out of timeouts.
There’s a good chance that if a timeout was made and the ball was advanced to half court, we get into the play sooner and Marcus’s shot might have counted
Yup, the only reason you wouldn’t call a timeout, other than not wanting the other team to sub, is if you want to go quickly and keep them backpedaling rather than setting their defense. You would assume they practice end of game scenarios all the time so they should have any number of plays to run based on how the defense is set up. But you have to go quick to keep the defense off balance and scrambling. Which they didn’t.
The reason you WOULD call a timeout is if you weren’t organized or if your team looked like it had lost composure and needed to be settled down. Which it looked like it did, they took 15 sec just to start the play and there was 6 sec left. Maybe they didn’t want Philly to have time but it’s cutting it really fine.
Personally, I can live with them not calling a timeout. I’m also ok with Smart taking the last shot, he actually made it. Philly would have been sweating on the Jays. What I’m not ok with is them taking so long to get going, they let Philly get set anyway and they didn’t leave themselves enough time to shoot, let alone get a second shot in the event of a miss. These are the “learning opportunities “ that are fine in the regular season but in the playoffs we can I’ll afford.
But it’s easy to second guess the last plays because they turned the game…JB made a bad read, he admitted it, and they took to long to get their poop together on the last play. Thereality is that if we had played the first half the same way we played the 2nd this probably isn’t a close game. We let Harden get too comfortable and he scored 42. That can’t happen in Game 5 and I suspect it won’t.