There was plenty of space behind Gordon, which makes it look like it could just be lobbed to him, but it's clear as day that Wade could cover that ground just as easily as Ben to go get it.
BG had a really good offensive game last night. Other than the two really bad TO's, one where he dribbled the ball behind his back and couldn't control it which is painful to see at the NBA level, he did some really good things. His dunk in traffic was really nice and if he could do that more that would be a big improvement since he gets blocked 25% of the time on his drives. And he did a fantastic job of getting to the line. But he still couldn't guard Wade for shit...
There is no way that Wade could have covered that ground given the position of his body. Wade would have been tripping over his feet as he tried to frantically get over there. Gordon was wide open. It was just a blown pass. There's a good chance that if the pass was completed, and Gordon fired the three, Wade would have in his panic, fouled Gordon, setting up another one of those 4 point plays. Wade was in a really bad position given where the rest of the Heat players were to defend Gordon. Wade got lucky that Thabo made a dumb pass, otherwise Gordon or maybe Thomas on the lob would have won the game.
Gordon was effective enough on Wade because of some of the defensive sets the Bulls were running. And by effective, I mean Wade didn't have good offensive numbers on Gordon. But Hinrich was clearly able to stay with Wade much better than Gordon. That 6 point scoring burst will happen. I believe two were on tough jumpshots, and one was on an explosive dunk. When Wade is on, very few can stop him. There was no way for Hinrich to stop that move that led to the dunk. A more athletic player like Scottie Pippen say, on Wade might have been able to recover and get a block, but most players are screwed if Wade does that move.
KC Johnson just on ESPN 1000 said that a lot of the other basketball reporters in Phoenix were talking about the decision to not have Derrick on the floor. I'm glad other people realize what we are dealing with.
Gray may not be fleet of foot, but he's tall enough to see around/over just about anyone trying to pressure the inbounds pass, and he's got really good hands plus basketball IQ plus is a fine passer. Maybe he's the guy who should have been inbounding.
