Welcome to a Sunday night edition of an NBA Rorschach Test, featuring Terrence Jones and Anthony Davis. The question: did Jones intentionally throw the basketball off the backboard so Davis could dunk it, or was it a shot attempt gone wrong that ended fortuitously? First off, here’s the play.
Did Terrence Jones throw an alley-oop to Anthony Davis off the backboard on purpose?
Officially, the statistician in Phoenix called this play a pass and an assist for Jones. That surprised me, especially since the Pelicans were on the road, so there was no home court bias here! But here’s the dang box score proving it.
The evidence for Jones doing it on purpose: it’s a really bad shot attempt, so bad that you wonder if it actually was; it turned out to be a really good pass, almost like he was doing it on purpose; and, Jones has shown the ability to make impressive and clever passes before. But, on the contrary, it’s still Jones, who averages exactly one assist per game for his career, and who is (theoretically) passing up a very makeable shot on the fly to attempt a very rare off-the-backboard lob.
I’ve always wanted players to pass off the backboard to teammates more often, but in practice, it’s a hard trick to pull off. And sometimes, when it does happen on purpose, we’re left wondering if it was even on purpose — like this play.
Let us know. Jones got the benefit of the doubt in the play-by-play, and if no one asks him, we may have to officially go with that. But if you’re a Terrence Pass Truther, we’d love to hear from you.
