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Jrue Holiday 29 Points/9 Assists/1 Game-Winner Full Highlights (2/23/2018)

785 views · Published 24 February 2018 · 3:49 · Indexed 26 October 2026

Channel: DownToBuck · 2018 · Sports

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Once again I am faced with the question: what is the true meaning of the word "Game-Winner"? If we take the term at face value, a game-winner is a shot that wins the game for the team of the player that made the shot. A game-winner could occur two minutes before the end of the game if no team scores any more points after that. Since that seems ridiculous, there needs to be some time-based limitation on when a game-winner can occur. Is it the last thirty seconds? The last ten seconds? The very last possession of the game?

There is no doubt that the best game-winners are the ones that happen as the game clock expires. That way, your opponent doesn't even get a chance to respond. They just have to walk off the floor in sadness. But everybody would agree that a game-winner converted with less than a second on the clock is almost as good, especially if the opposing team has no timeouts, because it's unlikely that they'll get a good look at the basket in that situation. 

What about go-ahead baskets with seven seconds left, as Jrue Holiday did? Seven seconds is plenty of time for a team to advance the ball and get a decent look, as Dwyane Wade did. In these cases, I prefer the term "clutch late-game shot". Holiday was clutch in making that floater (although perhaps not so clutch in settling for a floater when floaters are lame and stupid), but if Wade had just been a little more accurate with his jumpshot, Holiday's lame floater wouldn't have been a game-winner. That's why I feel like the term "game-winner" should only be reserved for situations where the chance of winning after the shot is made is greater than 90%.

However, "clutch late-game shot" just sounds clunky when you put it in a video title, hence the "game-winner" designation for Holiday in this one. I have principles, but sometimes principles have to be discarded in favor of practicality.

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