How The Trailblazers Made The Best Play In NBA History Top 5 NBA Plays - November 2nd

We're going to be freezing number 5 very quickly, because it's not hard to tell what's going to end up happening. So, player 1 is Kevin Durant in this situation, and player number 2 is Rudy Gay. Now, credit to Rudy Gay for improving defensively over the years, but I would not credit the guy as being much of a defensive player. And then the other guy who could potentially be in Kevin Durant's way in this situation is Pau Gasol, who has become kind of a joke with his ability to defend in the open space sometimes. So, as you might expect, not much resistance for KD as he attacks the basket on that one. Given that that's number 5, it's safe to say there were not a lot of games played on this night. This is the greatest play I've ever seen. Portland Trail Blazers incorporate all three of their best players into one play, Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, and Yusuf Nurkic. There's a lot of details in this one. The first thing we have is CJ McCollum handing the ball off to Damian Lillard. Having two offensive players like this moving in opposite directions can confuse the defense. And while that initial action doesn't result in an open shot, next they're making Brooke Lopez defend the pick and roll. And the Nets would find a way of actually hiding Lopez on screen and rolls before this season. So if you can get him involved in one, there's a decent chance you're going to put two points up on the board. And they do it with Yusuf Nurkic, who's a quality offensive player. And then the last bit of this play, as Lonzo Ball provides actually really solid help defense, is that CJ McCollum is wide open. So either McCollum or Lillard were going to score on the initial action with this play. Nurkic could score rolling to the rim. Or, as we see here, CJ McCollum is wide open. That is a hell of a play by Terry Stotts, as Nurkic would then finish it up and in. That's the type of offense you need. Ways to incorporate all of your best players and have multiple options rather than just specific plays for one particular player. Here we have Lamarcus Aldridge posting up on Draymond Green. Draymond is a hell of a defender and a hell of a post defender, but L.A. does have a bit of size on him and he still is a very good jump shooter. But the one thing that could have prevented this is we're actually going to look at Kevin Durant underneath the basket here. He's defending Kyle Anderson and Anderson has already gained some leeway on Durant given that he is on the other side of the paint. At this point, if you're Durant, you might as well just go and provide the help because you're not going to be able to get over to Kyle Anderson anyway. And even then, I'd rather double team Aldridge and force Anderson to beat me anyway. Now for number two, Steph Curry commits the act of what I like to call falling down. And then Danny freaking Green of all people just dunks on Kevin Durant. I'm not even going to pause or do anything. Let's just appreciate Danny Green throwing down a dunk like that one. And now for our final one, Damian Lillard going for the game. Once again I ask, why is Evan Turner in there? Same thing as before, he's a terrible three point shooter and the one other option that really would have made sense would be Pat Connaughton who's a way better three point shooter than Evan Turner is and would force the defense to have to really stay glued to him. I mean Alonzo Ball's already given Evan Turner quite a bit of space here and Damian Lillard is not looking to pass to Turner anyway. Just have more shooters in there Terry Stotts. And then of course we all know what happened, Lillard knocked down the game winner. So we praised the Blazers and Terry Stotts and we also gave them a little bit of crap. But when Lillard is that good in the clutch, does it really matter ultimately?