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Kemba Walker’s brilliant night — and finish — ruined by Anunoby ... Nurse and Nash’s unknown long friendship ... NBA ratings just fine ... What’s up with Dort’s contract?
Sports can be awfully cruel and Kemba Walker found that out on Thursday night.
Play out the final 0.5 seconds of Toronto’s stunning 104-103 victory over the Boston Celtics and probably 85% of the time the result would have been different. Kyle Lowry had to make an absolutely genius-level pass to get it over gigantic Celtics centre Tacko Fall to find OG Anunoby on the other side of the court and did just that. Then Anunoby had to coolly drill the shot, which he did to save Toronto’s season.
The defending NBA champions should have been dead in the water after Walker delivered perhaps the pass of the season, outfoxing Toronto’s swarming defenders to dump the ball to Daniel
Theis for a bucket with under a second remaining. It should have been the capper to a brilliant 29-point, three-steal Walker master class that began with 17 crucial points by Walker in the first quarter which allowed the Celtics to to build an early lead on a determined and desperate group of Raptors.
He got Norman Powell in foul trouble and built on his 4-for-4, 11-point fourth quarter in Game 2 which, teamed with the scoring exploits of Marcus Smart, gave Boston a rally and a win in that one.
Walker had waited so long for this chance to return to the biggest of stages after being stuck in Charlotte for years, on perennially awful teams following one of the great conference tournament and Final Four runs in the history of the game while at Connecticut.
Walker had only been in 11 playoff games since breaking into the NBA nearly a decade ago, losing eight of those contests. The Celtics took a bit of a chance on him in replacing Kyrie Irving, who has a title-winning shot under his belt, with an unproven post-season performer.
Walker has answered any doubts.
And not just with his offence.
“When you got your point guard setting the tone for you (defensively), it’s contagious and makes everybody else kind of be like, he’s the smallest guy on the court but he has one of the biggest hearts,” Smart had said of Walker.
“When you got a guy like that, you always want to be on his team so you always know you have a chance to win. When Kemba’s playing like that, we always feel like we have a chance.”
Walker made several more big defensive plays in Game 3. Some of them might have been flops, but he tends to get away with them and helped snatch momentum at several points when the Raptors were rolling. Not to mention a crucial and-one, followed by another big shot, as well as some end-of-quarter heroics even before he found Theis for what easily could have been the winner.
Walker had handed out 10 assists in the opener and played well defensively. He defended but couldn’t hit shots at all until late in Game 2. Then he put it all together in Game 3.
The surprise hiring of Steve Nash as the new head coach of the Brooklyn Nets projects to be a good one.
Nash has long been lauded as one of the best point guards and greatest teammates in the history of the sport. He’s also close with Nets star Kevin Durant through their time with Golden State (and let’s be frank, KD surely drove the bus on this hiring).
He doesn’t have experience in the job, but neither did other excellent coaches like Pat Riley, or more recently, Steve Kerr.
Raptors head coach Nick Nurse thinks Nash will do well.
“It caught me off guard, that’s for sure,” Nurse said before Game 3.
“I’ve known Steve for a long time and talk to him quite a bit, and have talked to him quite a bit recently. So he kept all that to himself, close to his chest, so it caught me off guard. But he’ll be great, man,” Nurse continued. “He’s one of the greatest players ever. I consider him a friend of mine and wish him well.”
The head coach of Canada’s
senior men’s team and the program’s former general manager and biggest former star actually have a long history. Nurse was coaching in Manchester, England, around 1999 or 2000, when Nash was an NBA player, but not yet a star. His brother, Martin Nash, was playing soccer for Bolton.
“Steve was over watching soccer games and kind of randomly called up our office and wanted to know if we were in training camp and we were and he came over and participated in training camp with my team, the Manchester Giants, to stay in shape. So that’s kind of where it started, that’s the origins of it,” Nurse said.
While many people love saying on social media they’re off the NBA bandwagon because the athletes dared to speak their mind about something other than sports, ESPN said Thursday that Game 7 of Houston-Oklahoma City generated over four million viewers in the U.S., making it the most-watched 2020 playoff game, the most-watched show Wednesday period and the fifth-highest viewed NBA game this season (behind the three Christmas games and the January Kobe Bryant memorial) ... How on earth did the agents for Canadian Luguentz Dort accept the worst contract in the NBA from the Oklahoma City Thunder. A league source said they should have held out for more, even though Dort was undrafted, instead of taking such a rough deal for their client. Hopefully fellow Canucks Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who have the same agents, do a lot better (they will because they’re both Top-17 picks with many guaranteed millions coming).