D.J. Augustin gets away with by far the best travel of the young NBA season
Every so often, I’ll get an email or a tweet or a Facebook message or a foreboding knife-carved treebank manifesto from someone who thinks I should use my exalted platform as a writer for Yahoo Sports to rail against the scourge of traveling in the NBA — to loudly decry those who take too many steps with too few dribbles in pursuit of highlights, thus sullying the dignity of a sport whose virtues are best expressed by, I don’t know, crisp execution of the four corners offense or whatever.
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I mostly disregard these emails, because focusing too much on whether that was gather-right-foot-left-foot or three discrete steps seems like a less-than-thrilling way to spend time. Sometimes, though, traveling is so blatant and gleeful as to be legitimately exhilarating and worth identifying as special in its own right.
Take a bow, D.J. Augustin. You’ve gone through the looking glass, turning the type of play that would typically elicit outrage from highlight truthers into its own unique brand of highlight. That’s quite something, really.
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Let’s take another look at the Oklahoma City Thunder reserve point guard’s walkabout during Monday’s meeting with the Houston Rockets, this time in slow motion:
That’s six steps, by my count, and that’s just tremendous. Anything worth doing is worth doing big.
The most amazing thing about Augustin’s amble: it wasn’t called a travel, even official Eric Lewis running right alongside Augustin the entire way. In fact, the play resulted in a goaltend against Houston power forward Montrezl Harrell. Augustin got two points out of this possession, and all he had to do was saunter his way from the arc to the cup without any meddlesome dribbling to impede his progress. Nice work if you can get it.
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Augustin finished with 12 points, five rebounds, a steal and six turnovers in 21 1/2 minutes, but the Rockets knocked off Oklahoma City 110-105 behind a breakout 37-point performance from previously slumping star shooting guard James Harden. After putting one in the win column for the first time this season, the Rockets were in a good mood in the home locker room:
Rocket players in the locker room are watching the DJ Augustin travel no-call video on their phones, still laughing that it was allowed.
— ClutchFans (@clutchfans) November 3, 2015
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We suspect no one was laughing louder than Rockets swingman Corey Brewer, who knows a thing or two about getting away with a few extra steps.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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