Last night the Los Angeles Lakers were holding on to a two-point lead over the New Orleans Hornets, who had given them a fight all night. With only 1.2 seconds left, though, and the ball ready to be inbounded on their end, the Lakers had this one pretty much sealed up; either they’d get fouled with a chance to ice the game at the free-throw line or time would simply run out before that. 1.2 seconds is not a lot of time. For the Hornets to get something close to resembling a chance to tie or win would mean something went haywire for Los Angeles.
As these things sometimes go, everything did not exactly fall apart, but thanks to Metta World Peace it was much closer and hilarious than necessary. As the above video shows, World Peace, out of nowhere, throws a tantalizingly slow two-hopper into the backcourt where Matt Barnes is standing in the corner of the floor farthest away from World Peace’s position. It was such a seemingly preposterous afterthought in the situation that the Hornets had center Jason Smith hanging out back there with Barnes because, well, he had to be somewhere, right?. The ball was thrown just out of Smith’s reach — who reacted to the shocking decision about as well as you could expect a seven foot, not-so-nimble center standing on the opposite spectrum of the floor to — and Barnes outraced him in scooping up the ball and letting time expire.
World Peace defended the play on Twitter last night (before he started a Skype session with random fans from the team plane, of course), and provided a look into his thought process:
Easy pass… Jason smith is a poker player.matt played running back. 1.3 seconds. Jason smith cant bend down that far. Keep the ball low.
The pass was not dumb.. Only one guy would make that pass.. Metta., did it work ?? Yes… Metta Man is a super hero…agree??
In this vain, sure, if you had to throw that pass, it makes sense to keep the ball bouncing low and away from Smith’s grasp. But in acknowledging that “only one guy” would think to throw such a risky pass under the opponent’s basket in the first place, World Peace demonstrates an awareness of the possibly costly outcome of such a choice, which in a strange way makes it gutsy, if incredibly unnecessarily gutsy counts. Moreover, while there were easier and far-less potentially damaging decisions that could have been made, World Peace would like us to know that even if we may not see it, or understand it, he’s got this, and it’s fine.
It’s the same kind of confidence that led him to make a crucial three in the waning moments of Game Seven of the NBA Finals in 2010, one in which the Staples Center collectively groaned before going insane with shock and awe.
Super hero or just a guy who makes sometimes-crazy decisions that pay off from time to time? If anything, World Peace has shown that this kind of drift from the ordinary or the safe play will probably happen again, because even if he just likes keeping things interesting for no reason other than it’s interesting, at least Metta Man has got a plan.
Griffin Gotta contributes to The Hoop Doctors and is a co-managing editor of Straight Outta Vancouver. The story arcs and infinite weirdness of the NBA are addictions he deals with every day. Email him at griffingotta at gmail dot com.
