Buzzer-beating 3-pointers are a trend for Rockets’ opponents

For the third time in 54 regular-season games, an opponent hit a 3-pointer in the final two seconds to overcome a two-point Houston lead.

From a Houston Rockets perspective, perhaps the most surprising element of Bojan Bogdanovic’s game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer in Sunday’s loss to the visiting Utah Jazz is in how familiar it felt.

The 2019-20 season isn’t yet to the All-Star break, and it’s already the second time for Houston to lose on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer at home. The first came on Dec. 9, when Nemanja Bjelica did it for Sacramento.

In both cases, the Rockets had taken a two-point lead courtesy of a made basket with under two seconds remaining. It was a Russell Westbrook layup in December, and a P.J. Tucker 3-pointer this week.

Each time, however, the Rockets still lost courtesy of an ensuing 3-pointer. Both the Kings and Jazz advanced the ball by calling a timeout, which also allowed them to draw up a sideline out-of-bounds play.

In both plays, the Rockets enlisted a tall center with long arms (Clint Capela, Tyson Chandler) to guard the inbounds passer, standing at a slight angle toward their own basket. Presumably, this was designed to help prevent either a pass into the corner or a lob toward the rim.

That effectively made it a four-on-four battle, and the Kings and Jazz were each able to momentarily free up a shooter by utilizing a screen. Had they not covered the inbounds pass, Houston could have had five defenders tracking four players through the maze of screens and cuts.

Another option if they didn’t cover the passer would be to position the center in a “free safety” role near the basket ⁠— which could allow the four defenders at the 3-point line to be less concerned about cuts.

As it was, the Rockets recovered well against Utah, with both Tucker and James Harden closing out hard on Bogdanovic. They didn’t contest as well on Bjelica, but he was over 30 feet away from the basket.

Both shots, on paper, were less likely than likely (perhaps much less likely) to go in — yet each did. Flip those two results, and Houston would be 35-18 and in position for home-court advantage in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs and only two games back of the No. 2 seed.

Instead, the Rockets are 33-20 and in the West’s No. 5 spot, only a game ahead of the No. 7 position.

It’s hard to say that Mike D’Antoni‘s strategy was faulty in either case, given the low probability of each long-range shot. However, with a two-point lead in both cases, it’s fair to wonder if perhaps the Rockets would be better served to try and overplay the perimeter and force a shot inside the arc — where the worst-case scenario is overtime, rather than a loss.

In each situation, with the Rockets at home and led by a pair of All-Star guards and former MVPs in Harden and Westbrook, Houston almost certainly would have been a slight favorite in overtime.

Strategy aside, another part of it is simply bad luck. How bad? Per Second Spectrum, Bogdanovic’s shot had just a 12.6% chance of going in, making it the lowest probability of any NBA game-winner this season.

For the entire season, the NBA has had three game-winning shots in the final five seconds from 28 or more feet away, and two of them were the shots from Bogdanovic and Bjelica at the buzzer to defeat the Rockets at Toyota Center. In both cases, the Rockets led by two.

The trend isn’t just limited to this season, either. In the final game of 2018-19, the Rockets led by two in Oklahoma City — only to lose on a dagger 3-pointer from Paul George with only 1.8 seconds remaining. The George trey was slightly different from this year’s buzzer-beaters, since it came off a transition sequence, as opposed to an out-of-bounds play.

That loss to the Thunder proved to be very costly for the Rockets, dropping them from the No. 2 seed to No. 4 in the West playoffs.

Including the two game-winners this year, that’s now three times in Houston’s last 54 regular-season games that they’ve lost a two-point lead courtesy of an opponent’s 3-pointer in the final two seconds.

It remains to be seen just how costly this year’s buzzer-beaters will be in the West standings. But it’s becoming a very familiar problem.

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