Washington Wizards execute beautiful late game ATO
I love this play that Randy Wittman and the Washington Wizards ran in crunch time last night during game 5 of their Eastern Conference Semifinals matchup with the top seeded Atlanta Hawks.
We run a similar action to this at Bard, though many elements are different including the entry. We also don’t have stone-cold Hawks killer Paul Pierce suiting up for us.
The Wiz did an awesome job of hitting Bradley Beal on the curl, getting him downhill and Beal delivered a beautiful baseline pass to Pierce after Marcin Gortat set a rock-solid flare screen.
It’s too bad the Hawks came down and retook the lead and won the game on the other end, especially because of how well executed the Wiz play was. Plus, Pierce apparently declared “Series!” to the Hawks bench after the shot went in.
My biggest question after rewatching the play is, what happens if the entry to Beal on the curl is not available? Does the entry go to Wall at the top of the key? Does he just dribble at the flare and see if Pierce still has a shot? I’d be curious to see the contingency plans and counters to the play.
After that ending last night, I definitely can’t wait to see what Coach Bud and Coach Wittman have in their bag of tricks for the rest of this awesome series.
