I might be on the cusp of a revelation that will change the way that basketball is looked at. Forever. Sometimes I surprise myself with my own genius, and this is one of those times. Part of me wants to hold on to my new genius theory so that I can sell it to ESPN for hella cash, and the other part of me wants to share it with my subscribers as a reward for being so loyal and, let’s just say it, lackeyish. Guess which part won out.
So I noticed that the Lakers and Suns had a pretty good game going after Warren scored his 23rd and 24th points off free throws about halfway through the third quarter. The Suns had a two-point advantage then, 72-70. By the end of the third quarter, however, the Laker lead was nine, and they ended up winning the game by nineteen.
It’s no coincidence that T.J. Warren did not score at all, not even one point, while the Suns’ small lead turned into an unrecoverable deficit. If the Suns wanted to win the game, they would have let Warren score more points. But they did not, so they lost.
My new hypothesis is this: if you need points, and you have T.J. Warren on your roster, you have to let him keep scoring points until you don’t need the points anymore. Only then can you tell him to stop scoring.
I don’t want to brag or anything, but I think my resume the Suns’ head-coaching position just jumped to the top of the pile.