Lebron: “Thanks Rashard”
Posted in Sports, Videos on May 23rd, 2009 by HyphenBy now, I hope you’ve all seen Lebron’s incredible game winning three from last night, but if not, see above. While this was clearly a great shot and an insta-classic NBA moment (Mo Williams = 2009 Thomas Hill), I’m still wondering one thing: what the hell was Rashard Lewis doing?
If you’re guarding the inbounder, you have a couple different options:
- Get up as close as possible to pressure the ball and make the pass difficult. Rashard is 6’10” with long arms…Mo’s like 6’1″…if you’re pressuring on the ball heavy, there’s no way Mo gets a clean pass off.
- Turn around and front Lebron off the ball. As Kenny Smith mentioned on the TNT post-game coverage, Williams wasn’t going to pass that ball to anyone else. The whole world knew it was going to Bron Bron, so if you don’t want to pressure the ball, put two on Bron and front him with your back to the ball.
Instead, Rashard got caught in two minds and did neither. He was worried about the lob to the rim (which only would have tied anyway) so he inexplicably backed up in the direction of the basket. That doesn’t prevent the lob at all, and in fact, makes it easier. If he really wanted to take away the lob, he should have been pressuring the ball. Then when Mo went to make an overhead pass to the top of the key, Rashard’s hands should have made that a difficult pass.
LOOOOL @ that halfhearted attempt to challenge Lebron’s shot too. He got caught in no man’s land and then gave a fake effort to challenge the shot. GTFOH.
But um, anyway. WE ARE ALL WITNESSES!
