Why Basketball Games Are So Hard to Finish

How can a professional basketball team on the brink of a championship blow a 15-point lead in under seven minutes?

Easy.

Basketball games are incredibly tough to finish, especially in the NBA. Everyone wants to immediately say the Miami Heat "blew it" (Dwyane Wade even said it), but history says it has little to do with choking and more to do with the game of basketball.

The dilemma for teams with leads is how to play offensively in the final minutes. There are two theories: keep playing the way that got you the lead or try to kill the clock. The former means you give your opponent more chances with the ball to catch up. It makes sense to slow the game down (and Dirk talked post-game about trying to speed it up). The latter theory does just that, but it can result in bad shots (which leads to transition basketball which opens up good shots for the trailing teams as well as speeding up the game).

The Heat are being criticized for shooting so many jumpers in the final minutes of the game, but that is mostly a reflection of their end-of-game philosophy. Up 15, they went into clock-killing mode. What happens? The offense stops moving because it is much safer to have Wade or James hold the ball than pass it around, then it results in isolation shots because there is not time to drive & dish. The bad shots the Heat took towards the end were caused by trying to run out the clock.

So why not continue to play like normal? Remember Tennessee's 20+ point lead over Ohio State in the Sweet Sixteen a few years back? The Vols came out for the second half and continued to shoot 3's early in the shot clock - what had worked in the 1st half. Those shots stopped falling and now Ohio State was getting extra possessions to come back (which they did).

Beyond the difficulty of how to play, there is a psychological disadvantage to having a late lead. Nobody wants to blow it. That makes simple shots much tougher. It makes free throws tighter. It also loosens up the opposition. If you are down 15, who cares if you shoot a three and it doesn't fall. At that point, you are losing anyway. It frees you up to play without pressure. All the pressure ends up on the leading team's side and, in basketball, shooting under pressure makes a big difference.

Finally, people underestimate how long 7:00 in the NBA is with a 24-second shot clock. If the winning team runs the clock down 20 seconds each possession and the trailing team plays fast and shoots after just 10, that is four possessions (two per team) in one minute. For the sake of argument, play that ought for the rest of the seven minutes. That means fourteen possessions left in the game - time enough for the trailing team to score 28 points if it gets two points/possession during that time.

But there is no way there will only be fourteen possessions - with the trailing team playing fast and at some point probably fouling to stop the clock and increase the number of possessions, there might be twenty or even thirty possessions left at the end of the game. Twenty possessions to make up fifteen points? That isn't so tough.

The way I coach being down a big margin is to win little victories. "Let's cut this to ten by the 4:00 mark. Then we'll have the momentum and they will start tightening up." "Let's get it to six with 2:00 to go." "Let's win the next minute and give ourselves a chance." The key is to present an idea that is do-able instead of focusing on how high the mountain is. We did this successfully in Houston down 20 in the first half. We managed to tie the game and part of it was the mental game we won by giving them small steps to accomplish. You can see it in the faces of guys during timeouts - the "we can do that" recognition when you ask them to shave four points off a lead in the next two minutes.

I don't know if Miami should have continued to play fast in the final minutes. Obviously they were unable to kill the clock and gave up too much transition to the Mavs. The two thing Miami would definitely re-do are to put LeBron instead of Bosh on Dirk (what happened there?) and to use their foul-to-give when Dirk caught the ball at the top of the key and stared down Bosh. It is a bit risky to do it because Dirk could try to get into a shot and get himself to the line (where he is nearly automatic), but if successful it means the Mavs have to come up with a side-out play for a quick shot (and there is no way Dirk gets that touch).

Historic comeback by the Mavs, but don't fall into the historic collapse narrative. Holding leads in basketball is much tougher than it seems.