I might have a low opinion of points scored in “garbage time” (they should be stricken from the record or at least put into a separate “garbage time” box-score so that they don’t sully the legitimate stats), but I don’t really care one way or the other if players want to score on the last possession where nobody’s trying anymore. In my view, if the clock is running, that means that you’re playing basketball, and the point of basketball is to score points.
Lance Stephenson’s comical layup with two seconds to go is fine with me. It’s kind of cheap how he pretended like he wasn’t going to do anything with the ball and waited until all the defenders were heading off the court, but it’s fine. The score of the game has no bearing on my opinion either. The Lakers were losing, so there’s no way that Stephenson’s late bucket could be construed as “rubbing it in”, but I wouldn’t care if Wes Iwundu had ended up with the ball with seven seconds go and decided to run in for a layup. If you don’t want somebody to score, you gotta play defense on them. That’s true for the first 47:30 of the game and it’s true for the last thirty seconds of the game too.
Back to the “garbage time” stats thing, Lance Stephenson had three points in this game. That’s what DTB’S OFFICIAL CORRECTED BOX-SCORE says, anyway.