Progress for Melo despite foul ending
BOSTON — Carmelo Anthony was in isolation again.
This time, he wasn’t matched up one-on-one against a defender. This was well after the Thunder’s 100-99 loss to the Boston Celtics on Tuesday, and it was the layout of the visitors locker room that had isolated Anthony.
He’d chosen the widest locker the room has to offer a visitor, a doublewide seat apart from the rest, walled in by the
entrance to the showers, and for a long time, Anthony sat there alone, presumably pondering the finish that had just unfolded.
With 8.4 seconds to play, the future Hall of Famer had missed twice at the free-throw line, setting up Marcus Morris’ game-wining 3-pointer 7.2 seconds later. It completed an epic comeback for the Celtics, an unthinkable collapse by the Thunder, which led by fivewith less than 17 seconds to play.
“I try not to say, ‘what happened?’ Or ‘what should I (have done) there?’” Anthony said later, after he’d emerged from his locker. “At this point, it’s a little too late for that. After the first one that was short, try to adjust it and shoot a little hard, a little too hard a second time. So, it happens. I live with it. You make some. You miss some.”
The story of Tuesday night is that the Thunder folded in the final seconds.
The story is that Anthony missed those free throws.
And the story is that
he sat there afterward in that extra-wide locker in silence, his knees iced, taking long pulls from a bottle of Fiji water and then having a quick phone conversation.
It’s that Paul George walked by en route to the shower and offered a supportive hand for Anthony to slap, and that Corey Brewer finally coaxed a smile out of Anthony as he headed for the door.
That’s the story.
But it was almost something different.
Because Anthony had been in isolation on the court, too, and it was something to see.
Lots of plays lost the Thunder the game on Tuesday, and Anthony’s missed free throws were the most notable. But lots of plays almost won it, too, and the 33-year-old veteran pitched in his share of those.
The most eye-opening came with a little less than two minutes to play.
Anthony held the ball outside the 3-point line on the right wing, matched up against Boston’s Al Horford, one of the NBA’s most versatile frontcourt defenders. Anthony drove almost to the paint, gave a shot fake and looked ready to step back into a patented but difficult fallaway jumper.
Instead, he passed. And it was a beauty, right on target to Brewer in the left corner for a 3-pointer that swished and put OKC in front 93-87 with 1:54 to play.
It’s the kind of play the Thunder needs more of from Anthony. He’s scoring 0.93 points per possession in the 3.5 possessions per game when he’s in isolation. That’s the 13th-most one-onone possessions in the league, and only teammate Russell Westbrook is generating fewer points per possession in the top 12.
But the pass to Brewer was perfection, and it wasn’t Anthony’s only encouraging assist against the Celtics.
In the second quarter, he’d posted up guard Terry Rozier, waited patiently for Horford’s double team and then kicked out to Westbrook for an open 3-pointer.
And then there was his shooting. Anthony made just 2 of 6 3-pointers but hit the only two he attempted in the fourth quarter, the kind of momentum-stemming jumpers he was brought to OKC to bury.
It was an encouraging fourth from Anthony, until it wasn’t.
If he’d made those two free throws — maybe if he’d made just one of them — the story would be something different. Instead, the story is that Anthony sat alone in that locker room and when he left said that “I’m pretty sure I’ll beat myself up about it tonight” and then move on.
His teammates already had.
“He’s a legend,” George said.
“He’ll be a legend in this league when it’s all said and done. For sure, in moments like this, not many times we can say he’s missed two free throws. It’s nothing needs to be said. He knows we got his back. He knows we’re behind him. That same moment, we all trust him at that line. It just so happened he missed those two.”