As sports fans, I think we probably let single events define players and
coaches more than we should. In this era where we want to evaluate things
quickly and neatly, it’s always easier (and oftentimes, lazier) to just let
one play on a big stage define somebody. It’s clear, it’s concise, it’s
also often incorrect, but it allows us to move on.
A last-second field goal
sailing wide left or sneaking just inside the upright is the difference
between Hunter Lawrence getting death threats and Hunter Lawrence never
having to pay for a meal on 6th Street ever again.
Just ask Scott Norwood.
Certainly, there are different flavors of these defining moments. There are
the “routine task” defining moments whereby you simply need to execute your
job and doing so (or not doing so) will forever alter your existence —
kicking a field goal inside 45 yards, knocking down free throws in the
waning moments of a basketball game, getting three batters out in the ninth
inning of a playoff game. You’re either a hero or a goat. Do your job, you
become an icon. Fail at your job, you enter the witness protection
program. No worries, right?
Then there are the “upside only” defining moments where there is some
sort
of divine intervention, and a hand comes down from the sports heaven and
turns a highly improbable outcome into reality, forever changing the
destinies of everyone involved. There is no equal and opposite downside
to
these moments not occuring; in other words, if Doug Flutie’s “Hail Mary”
to
Gerard Phelan falls to the Orange Bowl turf in 1984, Flutie is not
viewed as
some sort of loser who can never stroll around Quincy Market ever again.
However, the fact that it was caught sewed up a Heisman Trophy for the
BC
quarterback and sealed a place in college football immortality.
If that
pass is incomplete, is Flutie any less a quarterback than he was before
the
prayer was answered? Of course not. But the “Hail Mary” gave us what
we as
humans and sports fans crave — simple clarity. It happened, therefore
he’s
great, end of story.
We came within inches of having one of those moments on Monday night in
the
NCAA men’s basketball championship game. Down 61-59 with the clock
running out, Butler forward Gordon Hayward heaved a half-court shot that
caught glass, then rim and bounced off to preserve the win and the title
for
the Duke Blue Devils; what would have been a miraculous, possible
“greatest
game of all time” 62-61 win was instead a heart-pounding, very watchable
near miss with an ending we’ve seen three times before — Coach Mike
Krzyzewski and Duke cutting down the nets as champions.
This was clearly an “upside only” defining moment. The shot NOT going
in
doesn’t change our favorable impression of Hayward; if anything, his
overall
performance in this tournament has elevated him into the public
consciousness to where, if he decides to stay in school, he’ll be a
favorite
for pre-season Player of the Year. The NBA probably also likes his game
more now than they did three weeks ago, so he’s got a decision to make.
But what if that shot at the end of regulation went in? This is the
“upside
only” defining moment that us “what if-sters” out there dream
about…broad
ramifications impacting both sides, changing legacies, defining careers,
and
touching off great sports-bar debates.
So I pose this question to you, the loyal “Game Time” reader….”What if
Gordon hayward’s shot goes in?”
Let’s pretend that it did. What
changes?
GORDON HAYWARD
Let’s start with the guy who launched the shot, Hayward. What this
would
mean to him career-wise we’ll get to in a second. But let’s just get
the
“place in history” part of this out of the way. If that shot goes in,
it
becomes the most famous shot in the history of the greatest annual
sporting
event in our country. Moreover, Gordon Hayward becomes THE legendary
basketball figure in a state that views itself as the Fortress of
Solitude
to the sport of basketball; basically Gordon Hayward becomes Superman if
he
hits that shot. I mean…a small private school from Indianapolis, that
plays their home games in the gym where Hoosiers was filmed, and a
babyfaced kid from Brownsburg, Indiana hits a half court shot to knock off
Duke…IN INDIANAPOLIS?!? I mean…you can’t write anything cheesier
than
that. And yet, that’s what we were inches away from on Monday night.
Trust
me, I went to college in Indiana during the Damon Bailey Era; Gordon
Hayward
would never have paid for a house, a car, a meal, or a topless shoeshine
in
Kokomo ever again if that shot goes in. Ever.
As for the career ramifications for Hayward, he’s a guy whom NBA people
certainly knew about before the tournament and whom other college
coaches
knew about as well, as he was a member of the U-19 National Team coached
by
Pitt’s Jamie Dixon. However, we all know how much performance during
March
Madness can move the needle on an NBA prospect’s profile; going all the
way
back to the likes of Villanova’s Ed Pinckney becoming a top 10 pick in
1985,
the list is long and the graveyard is full of NBA players overdrafted based
on two weeks in March
It’s safe to say, though, that NBA front offices won’t all of a sudden
become smart in 2010. If Hayward knocks down that shot, it does likely
raise his profile to where he’s drafted five to ten spots ahead of where
he
should be. If nothing else, depending on how Hayward does in workouts
for
NBA folks so that it wouldn’t be viewed as a complete and total reach,
it
would have opened up the possibility of the Indiana Pacers at least
having
to ponder taking him if they are at the back end of the lottery, picking
say
around ten through twelve (which is right where they’re hovering right
now).
And if you think I’m crazy that it would get kicked around in Indiana’s
war
room, just remember this:
1. We are discussing this under the auspices of Hayward having HIT the
shot. Remember, he is now Superman, Ironman, and Damon Bailey all
rolled
into one.
2. Indiana is one of a handful of teams struggling MIGHTILY at the gate
right now; as Bill Simmons mentions in this column they are one of eight teams in the “We Make Less Than $500,000 Per Game”
club. Drafting the hometown kid who just hit the biggest shot in the
history of the sport would sell a few tickets. (This is a striking
parallel
to what the Jacksonville Jaguars are debating internally right now with
respect to drafting Tim Tebow, on many levels including both guys being a
reach at, say, the tenth overall pick.)
3. Mike Dunleavy, Tyler Hansbrough, Troy Murphy, Josh McRoberts….yeah,
the
Indiana Pacers are not afraid to employ white forwards.
4. If you think I’m crazy about this “Hayward to the Pacers” theory, go
watch the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary called Winning Time about
former
Pacer great Reggie Miller and his rivalry with the Knicks. They devote
about ten minutes of the documentary to the Pacers’ drafting of Miller
with
the eleventh overall pick in 1987 and how badly Pacers fans wanted the
team
to use that pick on Indiana Hoosier (and at the time, NCAA champion)
Steve
Alford, who played high school ball down the road from Indy in New
Castle.
The footage (which includes Alford watching the Miller selection on
television and looking like somebody shot his dog) is incredible,
especially
when we now know that Miller became a Hall of Famer, and Alford was
coaching
Manchester College within four years of being drafted in the SECOND
round by
the Mavericks. Nonetheless, I don’t think Pacers fans have become any
less
rabid for their local legends since then, at least I would hope not.
Especially for one that hit the biggest shot in the history of
basketball
(remember, we’re still pretending here).
(Cool side bar — When you go to YouTube to get the link to Hayward’s
near
miss on Monday night, the second video to come up is his
buzzer beater in his senior year in the 4-A
State Championship Game in Indiana. As someone who lived in Indiana
when it
was all schools in the same tourney, I HATE seeing the words “4-A” in
front
of a state championship game in Indiana; bring back the “old” Indiana
tourney, everyone in the same pool! That’s how it was until the late
`90’s.
But I digress…)
KYLE SINGLER
As we all know, Singler was named the Most Outstanding Player of the
Final
Four. Props to him, he was terrible against Baylor here in Houston in
the
Regional Finals and managed to bounce back and played a great all-around
floor game at both ends in the semifinals against West Virginia and the
championship game against Butler. But let’s just get this out of the
way
right now — if Gordon Hayward’s half-court shot goes in Kyle Singler is
obviously not getting any M.O.P. hardware. The trophy would have gone
to
Hayward.
Now, does this shot going in make Singler any less of a player? Of
course
not. As two separate statements go — “Kyle Singler is a good
basketball
player” and “Gordon Hayward’s half-court prayer went in” — one has no
direct effect on the other. However, with no 61-59 win for Duke, that
means
no individual hardware for Singler, no championship fragrance on his NBA
prospect report card, and no admittance into the conversation of
all-time
Duke legends.
Those first two consequences — no individual hardware and the
“champion”
label on his NBA prospect evaluation — are somewhat linked. Going into
the
tournament, no one was talking about Kyle Singler as a candidate to
leave
school early after this season, or at least if he did that it would be a
good decision. (I suppose theoretically everyone is a candidate to leave
school early.) NBAdraft.net had Singler going into the tournament as a
late
first-round pick….in 2011.
Now there is at least chatter about Singler having a tough decision to
make
— stay in school for his senior year or come out now while the Singler
Championship Express is in full force. Go back and look at the list of
M.O.P.’s of the NCAA tournament and it’s dotted with guys who were
drafted
well ahead of where they should have been on the strength of good NCAA
tournaments (Corey Brewer, Sean May, Juan Dixon, Matteen Cleaves all in
the
last ten years; Shane Battier and Emeka Okafor were probably
over-drafted as
former M.O.P.’s as well but they were going that high regardless of
their
teams’ tourney outcomes those seasons.)
My point is that now may be the highest that the stock will ever be for
Singler as an NBA prospect. He’ll never be as close to being a first-round
lock as he is right now. (Somewhere Josh McRoberts, a former Dukie
whose
NBA stock dropped every year he stayed in Durham, is screaming for
Singler to
come out. Either that or he’s
crying. One or the other.)
The flip side to that is that if Singler does stay, with Nolan Smith and
the
Plumlees returning and the introduction of freshman phenom Kyrie Irving
to
the mix, Duke will be the odds-on favorite to repeat as champion next
season. This would give Singler a chance to etch his name into a pretty
exclusive club of multi-time champions at Duke. In a school that prides
itself and sells itself to recruits on tradition, this has to mean
something
to Singler, especially if he is not considered a lottery pick, which I
don’t
think he is.
But again, the premise for this post was “What changes if Hayward’s shot
goes in?” I think it’s safe to say that Kyle Singler’s “coming out
party”
in this tournament is significantly muted.
COACH K
End-of-game strategies in basketball are fascinating and, at times,
quite
polarizing. Those who espouse certain views about fouling when up by
three
points or intentionally missing free throws when you’re ahead by less
than
one possession with only a few seconds left oftentimes defend their
stance
on these issues more vociferously than they would their views on
abortion or
the war in Iraq.
That said, here I go — I didn’t like Coach K’s strategy of having Brian
Zoubek intentionally miss the second free throw at the end of the game
on
Monday when the Blue Devils were up 61-59 with 3.6 seconds left. It
worked,
I understand his side of it, but I think it leaves too much to chance.
For
one, if you make it, your worst case scenario is that you’re up 62-59
and a
desperation three from the other team sends you to overtime. That’s
worst
case. Moreover, intentionally missing up two points still leaves the
chance
that a ticky-tack foul for over the back or a reach-in sends Butler to
the
line to tie the game (granted, the odds of Duke getting whistled for
anything there are minimal).
But more than that, the argument in favor
of
missing is that Butler doesn’t get to run a set play off of an inbounds
pass. I’ve never agreed with this line of thinking especially on
possessions that have to go all 94 feet in just a few seconds. The
defense
also gets a chance to set itself on these plays and really just has to
either knock down a long pass or keep a ball handler trying to dribble
the
length of the court in front of them. If you can’t do these things, you
don’t deserve to win. Duke intentionally missed the free throw and then
backed everyone away (except for Singler who got drilled by a Matt
Howard
screen) and Hayward still got off a the shot that bounced off.
Back to the “what if”…if that shot goes in, then Coach K goes from
being
shown on all of the graphics now tied with Adolph Rupp with four titles
to
being second-guessed for end-of-game strategy by morons on the radio
like me
for the next two weeks. It’s funny, of everyone involved on the Duke
side
of things, for all the blood and guts the players spilled on the court
that
night, no one’s legacy had a bigger potential “what if” swing than Coach
K.
Shot goes in, he’s an idiot. Shot stays out, he made the right call.
Of
everyone involved, this was almost a “downside only” defining moment for
him, although with three other titles and a top five recruiting class
coming
in, my guess is the Cameron Crazies would have looked past it.
GREATEST GAME EVER?
So now we’ve established the various changes in legacies if Hayward’s
shot
goes in — he becomes a demigod in Indiana and author of the greatest
storybook ending ever, Kyle Singler remains a marginal NBA prospect and
just
another in a long line of decent Duke players, and Coach K actually gets
questioned about end-of-game strategy and has one less title. Pretty
heavy
stuff.
Now, what would Hayward’s shot going in have done for the measurement of
this game in the annals of college basketball history (or even sports
history)? First, for those of you saying that it was already the
“greatest
finals game ever played”, I disagree. To me, NC State in 1983 and
Villanova in 1985 set the bar for finals games by pulling off the upset.
To
me, Cinderella has to live happily ever after to pass either one of
those
two games.
Given my choice of the Wolfpack or the Wildcats having played in the
“greatest finals game” ever, I’m going to go with Villanova. We can break
that one down in more detail some other day (or if some of you want to
make
the argument that 1983 was better, I’m all ears), but I have always
contended that the NC State win was more significant to the evolution
of
March Madness, but that the Villanova final was a better overall game
(both
were HUGE upsets).
So the question becomes does Hayward’s shot going in vault the 2010
title
game past Villanova-Georgetown (or for some of you, NC State-Houston)?
Let’s “Tale of the Tape” this thing:
Marquee Players
1985: There was no bigger star on the college basketball landscape from
1981-1985 than Patrick Ewing. This was Ewing’s final game, and his
supporting cast included sophomore phenom Reggie Williams and a point
guard
named Michael Jackson (at a time when the real Michael Jackson was still
relatively normal). Made for lots of great Thriller jokes, just trust
me.
Villanova, for an 8-seed, had it’s own pretty compelling set of
characters
led by Eddie Pinckney and Dwayne McClain, and while ‘Nova’s point guard
(Gary McLain) didn’t share a name with a demented pop star, he did snort
coke the day of the semifinals against Memphis State, so there’s that.
2010: Let’s face it, the average sports fan knew no one on Butler
before
the tournament, and they probably only knew Jon Scheyer because of the
random pictures of him on the internet with contorted facial
expressions.
There is not a single NBA lottery pick and possibly no first-rounders
playing in this game if teams decide to pass on Hayward or Singler.
ADVANTAGE: HUGE for the 1985 game.
Coaches
1985: John Thompson for Georgetown, Rollie Massimino for Villanova.
The
larger than life African-American coach against the feisty, pudgy little
Italian coach. Two of the best in the business at the time.
2010: Mike Krzyzewski for Duke, Brad Stevens for Butler. The biggest
name you could put on the coaching marquee versus a coach who my son
literally thought was a kid who snuck on the court to cut down the nets
after the regional finals.
ADVANTAGE: 2010
Venue
1985: Lexington, KY — a mecca of college basketball and an actual
college
arena
2010: Indianapolis, IN — a college crazy hoops state, a home game for
the
underdog, but a freaking football stadium
ADVANTAGE: 1985
Villain/Favorite
1985: Georgetown, a team that was comprised of entirely
African-American
players coached by an African-American coach on a campus and in a
conference
full of largely private, affluent, white schools. Let’s just say there
were
times it got ugly on road trips for the Hoyas, and let’s also say that
while
their casting as the villain had plenty to do with simply how dominant
they
were, and the racial part of the vitriol spewed toward them was
certainly
inexcusable, Thompson had a way of using that villain role to drive his
team
AND the part where forward Michael Graham liked to shove or swing at
anything that moved during the 1983-84 season didn’t help.
2010: Duke, largely because according to Dick Vitale, as a society, we
hate people who are successful. Whatever. I just hate hearing every
five
seconds from Vitale about how great they are. I agree, they are great.
Now
shut the hell up. Also, they have a string of diminutive, leg-humping,
unathletic point guards that goes back to Bobby Hurley and goes all the
way
up to Greg Paulus with Quin Snyder, Chris Collins and WOJO in between.
Successful? Yes. Hate-able? Oh hell yes.
ADVANTAGE: Even.
Babyface
1985: Villanova, senior-laden, pretty good Big East team. Lots of
likable guys and a fat coach. Always helps.
2010: Butler, small conference team from central Indiana with a coach
who
still gets carded.
ADVANTAGE: 2010
Sheer improbablity of an upset
1985: Villanova had the advantage of the whole “well, the hardest thing
to
do is beat someone a third time” in a season (which I think is a crock
and
would love to see the actual stats on this). That said, this Georgetown
team
was thought to be unbeatable.
2010: Butler had won 25 games in a row coming into Monday night and had
the
best player on the floor in a game being played five minutes from their
campus.
ADVANTAGE: 1985
Transcendent performances
1985: This game took place the year before the shot clock was imposed
(thankfully for Villanova), and as a result the Wildcats only took ten
shots
in the second half. They made nine of them. They shot 79 percent for
the game, which will simply never, ever, ever be done again. Harold
Jensen
(who?) came off the bench to go five for five from the field, all on
jump
shots. It was quite simply, one of those nights where you knew you were
watching something you’d never forget.
2010: Other than Hayward’s shot going in at the end (remember, we’re
still pretending), there wouldn’t have been anything in that game that I
would call “transcendent.” I mean, the defense was really good and
physical
from both teams, especially in the last ten minutes. But other than the
drama of the game being close throughout, there was nothing that made me
think throughout the game “Damn, this is an amazing game,” until the
last
three minutes where you realized that Butler still had a shot.
ADVANTAGE: 1985
Ending
1985: Game ended with a memorable visual of Dwayne McClain cradling
the
ball on his knees, but it was a pretty conventional college basketball
game
finish with some back and forth free-throw shooting. No buzzer beaters
or
particularly memorable late-game heroics.
2010: (Still pretending…) The greatest shot in the history of
college
basketball at the buzzer to beat Duke.
ADVANTAGE: HUGE for 2010.
VERDICT: The buzzer beater from Hayward essentially would have
cancelled
out the incredible name value of the players involved in the game (led
by
Ewing). Outside of that, the score is three advantages for 1985, two
for
2010, and one standoff (“Villain” category). It’s still, for me, 1985
as
the best finals ever, but it’s close.
So in the end, all that was at stake on that last shot was the NBA
careers
of Gordon Hayward and Kyle Singler, the sanity of Pacers fans, Coach K’s
legacy, an amazing barroom argument on “greatest game” ever, the rep of
all
mid-major teams and the last three hours of my life typing this blog
post.
Truly a game of inches, people.
Listen to Sean Pendergast on 1560 The Game from 3-7 p.m. weekdays on the Sean & John Show, and follow him on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2010.
