Everything about the game was nip-and-tuck. The Charlotte Hornets had surged in the final minutes and Dwyane Wade had a chance to tie the game with some last-second heroics. He caught. He dribbled. He pulled up from three.
He missed.
This was on March 17 when the Hornets took a 109-106 win at the AmericanAirlines Arena. The reaction after Wade’s shot hit the right edge of the back iron was far from kind. Why was Wade shooting a three? Why was he the one they wanted with the ball when they were down three? After all, at that point Wade hadn’t hit a three since December 16th. If Charlotte coach Steve Clifford could pick any of Miami’s wings to take a deep shot in the spot, it probably would have been the player who barely ever took much less made one.
Six weeks later, with Miami’s season on the line, the same was true of Clifford. The same was true of Wade, too, who still hadn’t hit a three since December.
This time, it didn’t matter – but only because it didn’t matter. Wade, a career 28.4 percent shooter from downtown, drained two triples in the finals minutes of a tight game in Charlotte to force a Game 7 back in Miami.
“I trust my teammates and I love them, but if we were going to lose I was going out shooting it tonight,” Wade said.
“I’ve seen Dwyane enough over the years that it just becomes winning plays, whatever those may be,” Erik Spoelstra said. “It’s born out of great competition. It brings the absolute best out in him. He works on [threes] all the time. He just never shoots it, but when it’s needed most.”
To the joy and amusement of most media members covering this series, Clifford hasn’t been shy about detailing his team’s schemes and tactics. After Miami followed up its most efficient offensive performance in franchise history in Game 1 with a Game 2 that included 70-plus percent shooting in the first half, Clifford mentioned on a number of occasions that some of the shots the HEAT were hitting were the shots Charlotte wanted them to take.
If Goran Dragic, as Clifford’s example went, was going to hit step-back threes off the dribble when Charlotte’s defenders went underneath screens, so be it.
It was a question of Process vs. Results for the Hornets, and instead of altering their coverages Clifford doubled down on his team’s analysis of the series. Rather than going over screens and trying to contest every shot , the Hornets packed the paint even more in Games 3 and 4.
“We’re playing it by the numbers just like they are,” Clifford said before Game 5. “You don’t have a lot of range shooters. [We’re telling them], ‘Shoot’. And they’re making.”
Fast forward to late Friday night with the HEAT up six and just a few minutes to play. Miami’s offense had grown stagnant, as offenses tend to do this late in a series when both teams have had ample opportunity to adjust their own adjustments. Wade again has the ball.
With the HEAT nursing the clock a little bit, Lee has time to anticipate and step over the primary screen from Joe Johnson that Wade didn’t show much intention of using. But Lee is still playing well off Wade, protecting his team against the drive.
Then another screen comes, this time from Josh Richardson. With Kemba Walker shuffling towards Wade – something Charlotte has done when Miami uses small-small pick-and-rolls – Lee again sinks down with Richardson to protect the driving pocket before recovering to his mark.
Finally, a third screen. With 10 on the shot clock, Wade must be using this one. Luol Deng comes up, Lee elects to go over the top while Frank Kaminsky shows out on the ball and Wade makes the pass to a popping Deng that has earned Miami so many of its best looks in the series.
But Kaminsky recovers and Deng sends the ball back to Wade with just a few seconds left. Look where Lee plays him.
“They gave it to me,” Wade said. “This is a good defensive team. Courtney Lee is a good defensive player. You’re not going to always get what you want, so they gave me the first one.”
Even with the clock ticking, Lee still plays off Wade giving just enough room for the triple. And why shouldn’t he? It had been nearly half a year since Wade hit one, and he had been hesitant to take them before in this series. There was still enough time to put the ball on the deck.
Instead, Wade takes Charlotte’s coverage in stride and Miami goes up nine.
“I was glad he took them,” Johnson said. “That’s what the defense gave him, and he took them with confidence.”
There may have been a greater than 70 percent chance of Wade missing that shot, but that still means he had a nearly 30 percent chance of it going in. That’s sort of the trick of the playoffs. As much as every team talks about trying to find the best, most efficient shots for every possession, the percentage plays only play out over the weeks and months which compose an 82-game schedule. Within one game, or one possession, anything can happen.
Regression, in either direction, can always come later.
About two minutes after that first possession, Miami faces a similar situation. Up just two after Walker threatened to burst into a fiery ball of light, Wade has the ball up top.
The first screen comes. Lee, who just had Wade hit a three over him, goes under the pick. Wade is more than welcome to try again.
But he doesn’t. Wade resets. Another screen comes. It’s Richardson again, bringing Walker in tow. Walker again hedges out onto Wade to prevent the drive while Lee gets through the pick.
Watch what happens this time.
Walker hedges out on Wade long enough to get him back to the wing. While Walker is always supposed to return to Richardson to prevent an open jumper – a pass Wade had made to Richardson late in Game 5 – he waits until Wade is behind the arc and picking up his dribble. Perfect time to release and return the mark to Lee. And Lee, recovering to Wade, goes to the elbow rather than heading straight toward his man.
Just enough space for Wade to try, and make, again. This one being just the seventh three Wade has made in the last two minutes of a game within five points or less – for his career.
“He’s not really known to be a three-point threat, but big time players make big time plays,” Walker said. “That’s what he did. He rose to the occasion. He’s been here before. This is nothing new to him.”
It didn’t matter that the attempt may have been worth about 0.84 points-per-shot over the course of Wade’s career. Wade got three points out of the first shot, and three points out of the second one.
That’s a reductive way to look at it, but it’s what late-game situations in the playoffs often come down to. The likelihood may be that a player is going to miss.
But what if he makes it?
If he does, we can all stand up straight and call it statistically improbable. We can also call it the special sauce of the postseason, and sports in general.
It doesn’t have to make sense that Wade pulled out a couple threes in an elimination game just as a shot like this, incredibly well covered by Lee, doesn’t make sense either.
“There just came a point where I just had to make shots,” Wade said. “Thank God I finally got something to go in.”
Shots like that are why they play. Shots like that are why we watch.
Shots like that also don’t matter if a team doesn’t give them a chance to. We could spend thousands of words going over this game, but were it not for all the loose balls corralled, the second chances, a late burst from Dragic, charges taken by Deng and Udonis Haslem and even some fortuitous bounces like Jeremy Lin missing some opportunities at the rim in transition – Wade’s shots would have fallen on a deaf scoreboard.
Miami will most likely – but hey, maybe not – have to find another way to win Game 7 on Sunday. If they do, that’s another story to tell.
However the series plays out, we’ll long remember Wade, Lee and Clifford playing out the percentages with everything on the line. Only we won’t remember it quite like that. We’ll remember it as greatness, at 34-years old, on display. We’ll call it magic.