Sit down. Listen.
We have been here four times this season. Tied, two minutes, and we have lost three of them. I am not going to talk about heart, because you have heart, and heart is not what lost us those three games.
Here is what lost us those three games. In the last two minutes, every single one of you tried to win it by yourself.
What the tape says
I watched all three. In the final two minutes across those games, we took eleven shots and made nine of them — but we threw the ball away four times and did not get a single second-chance rebound.
Nine out of eleven is a great night. Four turnovers and zero offensive boards is how you lose a great night.
The reason is not greed. The reason is that when the clock gets loud, everybody's field of vision narrows. You stop seeing the weak-side man. You stop seeing the help. You see the rim, and the rim is the one thing on the court that is always covered.
One instruction
So here is the whole plan, and it is one instruction, and I want you to say it back to me.
When the clock is under two minutes, the ball touches two pairs of hands before it goes up.
That's it. That's the entire adjustment. Two pairs of hands.
Why? Because passing it once buys you two seconds and forces the defence to rotate, and the rotation is where the open man lives. Because a shot created by a pass is a shot someone else helped make, and helped shots go in more often. And because the second pair of hands is usually the person who is standing wide open and has been screaming for eleven seconds.
Two more things
Defensively: no gambling. Under two minutes, a steal is worth one possession and a gamble costs one possession, but a gamble costs it for sure. Stay in front. Make them take a hard two.
And the rebound: whoever shoots, two bodies go to the glass. Not one. Two.
The last thing
They have won eleven straight. That is not my problem. My problem is eleven straight possessions where two pairs of hands touch the ball.
You already know how to play. You have played forty-two games. Just do not let the clock make you smaller than you are.
Two pairs of hands. Say it back to me.