The Boston Celtics believe in the fair and unbiased system of rock-paper-scissors. When they faced a technical free throw in Sunday’s game against the Heat, a quick game between Jae Crowder and Avery Bradley — with Terry Rozier officiating — determined who would shoot it.
Celtics used rock-paper-scissors to pick a free-throw shooter in a game
Crowder won and then he didn’t hit the free throw!
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Normally, the duties would fall to Isaiah Thomas, a career 87-percent shooter and the team’s leading scorer, but he had been ejected from the game. Crowder entered the game shooting 90.3 percent, but his rock-paper-scissors win and subsequent miss (4-for-6 on the evening) now drops him to 86 percent. Bradley’s only at 76 percent, for the record.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s an important part of the end of the game. When we come into the huddle and decide who we’re drawing a play up for, we do rock-paper-scissors first. And obviously, you have to have multiple rock-paper-scissors games going on to get to the final. And we bracket that out and by the time about one minute is left on the clock, I come in and ask who won and we draw up a play and that’s who it’s for.”
OK, so either this is the boldest strategy the NBA has ever seen, or Stevens is joking about it. But can you imagine this slippery slope?!
- Referees aren’t sure who the ball was off of? Rock-paper-scissors!
- If that’s fine, let’s get rid of the jump ball completely!
- Was that a shooting foul or a clean block? Better RPS it.
- Overtime is exciting, but there’s kids here and we don’t want to run them past their bedtime. Rock-paper-scissors on three.
- In fact, why do we play this entire game at all? Someone might get injured.
And that’s how the NBA turns into the national rock-paper-scissors league. You can blame the Celtics for that.
