Arenas, Haywood, and What Could Have Been
Up 7, three minutes left in the Washington-Cleveland game. Still plenty of time to blow it, if these are the same Wizards who've been playing all year. Then Mo Williams puts up a shot from the perimeter as Brendan Haywood stands intimidatingly in the paint. The Cavs have taken a lot of perimeter shots on this night, especially when Haywood's been on the court. Williams' shot clangs off the iron, and Gilbert Arenas, like Haywood playing in his second game of the season, goes up for the clutch rebound. As he comes down, Arenas whips the ball down the court to a streaking Antawn Jamison for the breakaway dunk. Up 9. Now it's real. All game long, the crowd has wondered if it should believe, wanted to believe, hoped to believe, and the players on the court seemed to be doing the same. Now they believe. You can see it on Nick Young's face as he takes an Arenas pass and charges to the hole with 1:30 left. You can see it in Caron Butler's eyes as he leaps up to steal the Cavs' inbounds pass down 5 and with 50 second remaining to essentially put the game away. You can see it in the body language of all the Wizards as LeBron does what LeBron does, finding open teammates, hitting long three after long three, and generally defying every rule about how basketball is supposed to work. The Wizards team that has played most of this season would have collapsed, folded, stopped playing defense and started throwing up bad shots on the offensive end. Instead, they keep hustling, keep getting after the boards, and let an eerily calm and collected Arenas take control of the offense. And, lo and behold, Arenas, Haywood, Butler, Jamison and the crew make more plays down the stretch than the King.
