Zach LaVine hits season’s craziest shot … and it doesn’t count
Zach LaVine has been in an awfully rough slump of late, having missed three-quarters of his shots and 11 of his last 12 3-point tries since Christmas. When he broke out during the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Tuesday tangle with the Oklahoma City Thunder, though, it seemed like he was hitting everything he threw up … almost literally.
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With the Wolves trailing by six and less than four minutes remaining in the fourth quarter of a game Oklahoma City had controlled throughout, Andrew Wiggins reached in to knock the ball away from a driving Russell Westbrook, tapping the ball to teammate Nemanja Bjelica, who chucked it ahead to LaVine, who had leaked out in transition with designs on a fast-break dunk that would cut the deficit to four and further ignite the Target Center crowd. At the same time, Kevin Durant had designs on a big-time chasedown block that would keep the lead at three possessions and stifle the Minnesota faithful. Neither got what he wanted, but we wound up with something so much more:
As Durant fouled LaVine from behind, the ball went flying up in the air, bouncing high off the backboard before gently falling through the net as the two players collected themselves on the baseline, producing what looked like the craziest and-one bucket of this NBA season.
Unfortunately for Wolves fans, though, a replay review showed that the ball bounced too high off the backboard — specifically, off the top of the backboard, hitting a wire above the basket that is considered out of bounds and that renders the play dead at that point. Instead of getting a remarkable and-one, LaVine simply went to the line for two free throws; he split his pair, but the Wolves rebounded the miss, creating another possession that would end in a Wiggins dunk that capped a 15-3 run, cutting the Thunder lead to three at 89-86 with 3:15 remaining.
That’s as close as the Wolves would get, though. Durant took over down the stretch, scoring 12 points in the final three minutes to avoid a second-straight dismal late-game collapse and lead Oklahoma City to a 101-96 win. LaVine would finish with 21 points on 7-for-12 shooting, nine rebounds and three turnovers in just 26 1/2 minutes in the loss, showing signs of the sort of on-the-ball development that interim head coach Sam Mitchell has been trying to coax out of his talented young sophomore charge, while also joining Boston’s Jae Crowder atop the list of Coolest Shots That Didn’t Count in the 2015-16 season.
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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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