Obviously, the two Dahntay Jones blunders were the easiest errors to point to in terms of why the Pacers were unable to beat the Heat in regulation last night. But there were of course two other major reasons: Indiana allowed LeBron to shoot a wide-open corner three to tie the game and then were unable to even get a shot off on the ensuing possession, as Darren Collison got swallowed up by that same soon-to-be-MVP player and coughed the ball up.
Good stuff showing what actually went down in terms of Xs, Os and scrambling rotations. Apparently Frank Vogel said after the game that Danny Granger should have stayed home and not rotated over to help on a driving Dwyane Wade. That is certainly one way to look at it. And a reasonable one considering that the team was up 3 and their wasn’t a ton of time left. But, still, how does Granger overlook 20 years of basketball instincts to not slide over and cut off a guy from getting a wide-open layup, as Wade appeared to be headed for? There was still about 12 seconds left and LeBron isn’t exactly Ray Allen. Nor does he sit in the corner waiting for drive-and-kicks that often like he is Bruce Bowen.
Regardless, what happened when the Pacers tried to win it in regulation was even uglier.
Not much to discuss here. Collison needs to be able to get rid of that ball or do something with it. Paul George clearly had some daylight over on the left wing and could have, at worst, gotten off a three with Dwyane Wade sagging.
Last night during Indiana’s overtime loss to Miami, Dahntay Jones single-handedly cost his team at least 3 points in the final 70 seconds of regulation. His first mistake came with his team up 4 points and a little over a minute left. While watching live, I actually missed his amateurish-looking turnover (at 2:26 in the video above) because I was looking down to type a tweet about how well he boxed out Dwyane Wade to get the rebound.
The box-out/rebound sequence seemed worthy of praise to me since Dahntay had just had some bad luck a few minutes earlier when he did a great job streaking down the court to get a near-certain dunk in transition (at 1:56 in the video), only to have Dwyane, as he is wont to do, come out of nowhere to block his flush attempt (and perhaps get a little body. Dunno. Looked clean enough.) I always appreciate it when a player has something not go his way but still mentally stays in the game well enough to remain committed to fundamental basketball. Like Dahntay did on that textbook box-out to win the rebound (at 2:11).
But, yeah, that weak cross-court pass he made after panicing while being trapped bringing up the ball is pretty inexcusable. It should be noted that, had the guy semi-lurking not have been LeBron James (or Andre Igoudala), it may have just gone down as a scary-looking, ill-advised pass that ended up in Danny Granger’s hands and gave the Pacers a late-in-the-shot-clock start to their offense on a key possession. But since LeBron is a freak, he jumped the passing lane easily and took it the other way. I doubt Paul Pierce or Ron Artest get to that ball. Still, horrible decision, horrible pass.
Worse still was what Dahntay did on the next possession. Darren Collison drove the lane and short-armed a runner in the lane. Dwayne Wade finally came away with the ball after the miss and made an very nice outlet pass to a LeBron, who was running a fly route towards the other goal. Dahntay had no prayer of stopping the play and should have just let LeBron get the dunk and tie the game. Instead he foolishly tried to foul James to prevent the dunk in vein and turned the score into a three-point play (at 2:45 in the video).
With these two major blunders late, he didn’t lose the team the game, but he certainly didn’t help.
But in actuality, he really did.
Unfortunately, nobody is going to remember how well he played throughout the game. His stat line isn’t even particularly impressive, even if 11 points in 22 minutes is just fine (not to mention the best per-minute production of any Pacer scorer last night). But he did much more than that to make the second unit productive and keep an early Pacers lead from evaporating even more quickly than it did. This bench has not played well very often over the past month. When George Hill was out for an extended stretch, they were routinely god-awful. But last night, with Hill sidelined with a shoulder injury, they were productive at times.
The video above shows some of that. He ran the floor, ran the pick and roll, made some excellent entry passes (a rarity to see from this franchise over the past half-decade) and even knocked down some threes. And the pass he makes to find AJ Price at the 0:28 mark in the video above might be the best find I’ve ever seen him make.
By all means, everyone should hammer him for those two (basically) game-losing mistakes. Winning time is winning time after all and if you screw up at the wrong time, whatever else you did doesn’t ultimately matter.
But this is just the regular season and Dahntay has been a surprisingly good offensive player off the bench for the Pacers, who have had to otherwise deal with an injury-depleted second unit with Hill and Jeff Foster missing many games and Tyler Hansbrough often playing horribly.
Ultimately, if Dahntay makes mistakes like he did in the final 70 seconds of regulation, this team’s bench either needs a significant upgrade at the trade deadline or they will be in a lot of trouble. But if he plays like he did for the first 46 minutes and 50 seconds? They might be just fine.
George Hill is set to return to the Indiana Pacers pretty soon, and Mike Wells of the Indianapolis Starbrought up an idea that Hill could be the starting point guard instead of Darren Collison. Indiana’s coach Frank Vogel even thinks he’s “that good.”
“Quite honestly as good as [Darren Collison] and Paul George have been playing, George is going to be a guy who continues to push for those starting jobs,” head coach Frank Vogel told Wells. “He’s that good of a player and we’re looking forward to him getting back.”
As far as Wells’ thoughts on the matter, he wrote that it would be better for Collison to come off the bench since him and Tyler Hansbrough make a solid combo together.
Teaming Collison and Tyler Hansbrough together in the second unit will be a positive for Hansbrough because they’re familiar with each other and it should help him get out of his season-long shooting funk (38 percent shooting). Collison and Hansbrough were effective in running the pick-and-roll together last season.
Hill is set to return some time in the next couple of days.
Who would you rather have as the starting point guard: Hill or DC?
All respect due to Paul George for an excellent block here but it was really the great hound-dog, full-court pressure Darren Collison put on Chris Duhon that forced him to take such a weak, swattable shot. (via @Jose3030)
