Controversial no-call on travel, small-ball dominance help Wizards beat Heat
As I’ve discussed before, people sometimes get mad that I don’t get typically get super worked up about uncalled traveling violations in the NBA. (In fact, many seem upset this very day that I helped highlight 7-foot-3 San Antonio Spurs center Boban Marjanovic’s delightful double ball-fake of Philadelphia 76ers rookie Jahlil Okafor from Monday’s bloodbath without calling for the refs to whistle Boban for steps in the final seconds of a 49-point game.) My general opinion: I don’t think traveling is as big a problem as fans who seem to prefer travel calls to cool dunks and dribble-moves; I don’t think the NBA game is significantly lessened, cheapened or worsened by not having more traveling calls chopping up game-flow; and I think the more extreme examples of it tend to be either caught by officials or so ridiculous as to be enjoyable for their absurdity.
That said: If you are a Miami Heat fan, and you are ticked off about NBA officiating and traveling on this Tuesday … well, I feel you.
[Follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
First, some unreserved praise. With two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter of a hard-fought tie game between the Heat and Washington Wizards on Monday night, Wizards shooting guard Bradley Beal straight-up picked the great Dwyane Wade’s pocket in the open floor, raced down court and finished with an authoritative flush that, under different circumstances, might have made the future Hall of Famer proud:
Now, though, the wag of the finger. After an offensive foul against Goran Dragic, on the ensuing Washington possession, Beal found himself guarded on a switch in the left corner by Heat big man Chris Bosh. As Beal gained the lane and elevated for a layup attempt, he found his path blocked by the arms of both Bosh and Dragic, and attempted to alter his flight path for an athletic reverse layup. He never actually got the shot off, though:
Play continued, which seemed to baffle the Heat players, who thought for all the world that Beal had jumped and landed while maintaining possession the whole time — a clear violation of the NBA’s traveling rule. (“If a player, with the ball in his possession, raises his pivot foot off the floor, he must pass or shoot before his pivot foot returns to the floor. If he drops the ball while in the air, he may not be the first to touch the ball.”) The refs kept their whistles in their pockets, though, allowing Beal to whip a pass to Gary Neal in the short corner, who promptly elevated and drilled a 3-pointer that put Washington up by five points with 1:07 remaining.
The no-call left the Heat, and head coach Erik Spoelstra, livid:
Miami spun out from there, with a missed 3-pointer by rookie Justise Winslow marking the Heat’s last chance at getting within a single possession and Bosh deciding to get his money’s worth in arguing the no-call after the fact to the tune of two technical fold and an ejection with 28 seconds remaining. John Wall made four straight free throws thereafter, and Washington came away from its visit to South Florida with a 114-103 victory, marking the second time in a week the scuffling Wizards had knocked off the East’s top team on the road.
Even after getting an early start on his postgame cool-down, Bosh — who finished with 18 points, nine rebounds, four assists, two blocks and a steal in 36-plus minutes of floor time — seemed somewhat steamed about the traveling call that wasn’t:
So did Bradley Beal travel? Chris Bosh thinks so #Heat pic.twitter.com/pgksp4qYtu
— Manny Navarro (@Manny_Navarro) December 8, 2015
“It was a travel,” he said, according to Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press. “No, I didn’t watch it. There’s no need to watch it. I know what happened. … You can’t travel. It’s a travel. You can’t go to the rim and catch your own ball when you come down.”
It’s hard to blame him for that, but — as is always the case with one missed call one way or the other — it’s also hard to pin Miami’s sour result on the outcome of that play, after the Heat shot themselves in the foot with 17 turnovers that turned into 24 Wizards points, six missed free throws and, perhaps most notably of all, an awful lot of problems stopping Washington when Randy Wittman went small.
The Wizards made big runs late in the third and fourth quarters with by going super small, with Jared Dudley — already an undersized four — playing center in shooting-heavy configurations that saw him flanked by Beal, Wall, Neal and Otto Porter Jr. Miami couldn’t stop Wall (who finished with 26 points on 9-for-13 shooting and seven assists in 38-plus minutes just one night after hobbling off the Verizon Center floor with a right leg injury) off the dribble, and the combination of his dribble penetration and all the live shooters spread out around the arc created matchup nightmares for the Heat, who entered Monday ranked second in the NBA in points allowed per 100 possessions but could not come up with an answer for the Wall-Beal-Dudley-Neal-Porter unit, which outscored Miami 24-7 in seven minutes of game-tilting floor time.
Spoelstra discussed the difficulty that lineup posed after the game, according to Manny Navarro of the Miami Herald:
“Basically you’re dealing with five guards out there,” Spoelstra said. “Everybody is out behind the three-point line. Welcome to the NBA. This is what everybody is doing right now. We’d been doing a good job [of defending it to this point]. Tonight was the first night we didn’t corral it.”
Wittman’s tactical shift had another major benefit: prompting Spoelstra to pull massive center Hassan Whiteside, who had scored 14 points on perfect 7-for-7 shooting and blocked three shots in 23 minutes of burn before getting benched for the final 14 minutes and 41 seconds of game time. Washington outscored Miami by 13 points in that span.
Perhaps most interesting: Wittman says that even if Spoelstra had decided to reinsert Whiteside down the stretch, he would’ve stayed with Dudley at the five — a look he’s been experimenting with a bit more of late — because with Marcin Gortat back in Poland tending to a family matter and Nene and Drew Gooden sidelined by calf injuries, he just didn’t see a better way to get his best five on the floor, according to Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post:
“I didn’t have any other option,” Wittman said. “Duds did a good job of defending. I thought he fought [Chris] Bosh as good as he could. If they wanted to go big, we felt we would let them post Whiteside up. That’s something I don’t think they want to do a whole lot the way they play. We would be making them do something they don’t want to do.”
When the Heat (12-7) had two big men on the floor — combinations of Whiteside, Bosh and Josh McRoberts — the Wizards emphasized attacking the slower of the bigs with pick-and-rolls in an attempt to create mismatches on the perimeter.
“That’s just adjusting to the way we need to play,” Wizards guard Bradley Beal said. “We made them adjust to us rather than us adjust to them. That’s what really won us the game.”
Sitting down the stretch evidently didn’t sit too well with the 26-year-old Whiteside, according to Ethan Skolnick of the Herald:
[Whiteside] seemed lost in space during late huddles, biting or curling his lips, and he didn’t stick around to speak with the media afterward. […]
When I suggested that Spoelstra left Whiteside on the bench in the fourth quarter out of the fear of chasing Dudley out to the arc, Dudley replied, “I bet.”
Dudley explained that, with Josh McRoberts guarding him, and Wade guarding point guard Ramon Sessions, the Wizards got the Heat in a pick-and-roll situation, and Sessions made an open three-pointer.
“So whoever has the mismatch with the big, we were gonna put them in pick-and-rolls,” Dudley said. “And that’s what we have to do with our team right now.”
Whether the Wizards will continue to do it once they start getting their bigs back — a process that will reportedly begin today, with Gortat returning from Poland and expected to start against the Houston Rockets on Wednesday — remains to be seen. The early returns, though, have been really positive; with Dudley on the floor and all their other traditional bigs (Gortat, Nene, Gooden, Kris Humphries, DeJuan Blair, Ryan Hollins) off it, Washington’s outscored opponents by 22 points in 61 minutes, the equivalent of 17.6 points per 100 possessions, according to NBAwowy.com.
If Wittman can rely on that kind of production in the right matchups, Washington might not need much help from the refs on traveling calls … though we’d imagine they won’t start turning those favorable whistles down, all the same.
– – – – – – –
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!
Stay connected with Ball Don’t Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, “Like” BDL on Facebook and follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.
