Nuggets fans are, perhaps understandably, often annoyed with Will Barton for his hero-ball tendencies at the end of games. I totally get it. High-confidence, low-success players often enrage their fanbases with their late-game antics. I distinctly remember Avery Bradley catching plenty of flak from Pistons fans for missing game-winners, and I would certainly be mad as all heck if Eric Bledsoe decided he wanted to be the hero for the Bucks and attempt a game-winner while Giannis and Middleton are on the court. If Lance Stephenson were ever on the court for final possessions, you can bet he would be doing dribble moves and chucking that trash up at the rim ten times out of ten.
The thing is, it’s HARD to run a play at the end of the game. You don’t have unlimited time and the opposing team is extremely locked in on defense even if they didn’t play a lick of defense the entire rest of the game. If you run a play, you risk not getting a shot attempt, you even risk turning it over because of the ball movement. It’s safer to just give it to your best ISO scorer and tell him to get an ISO bucket. I’m not saying that Barton was told to get an ISO bucket, but he might be their best ISO scorer, so it just sort of played out that way.
The Nuggets didn’t need his attempted heroics as they beat the Larriors (Warriors with an L, haha, so funny LMAO) with room to spare, 115-108, which is good because if Barton had squandered another game-winning opportunity, some angry Nuggets fan would have broken into the Nuggets front office and impersonated their GM just to trade him off their team for a second-round pick.