Matt Barnes proves that sometimes the best shots are terrible passes
He’s dished more than 1,500 assists and knocked down more than 900 3-pointers during his 14-year NBA career, but Matt Barnes isn’t necessarily known for brilliant passing or deadeye marksmanship. On Sunday, though, through sheer serendipity, the Sacramento Kings swingman managed to provide both.
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With just over four minutes remaining in the third quarter of the Kings’ visit to Barclays Center to take on the Brooklyn Nets, Barnes handled the ball in the center of the floor beyond the 3-point arc, looking for his teammates to cut and move in hopes of generating some half-court action. Rudy Gay obliged, pushing defender Joe Harris toward Barnes before spinning away toward the rim for an alley-oop pass from Barnes. There was just one problem with the plan:
Barnes’ pass was so far off-target that it hit the square on the backboard and splashed through the net. Instead of an assist on a deuce, he made the most ridiculous and unexpected trey of his career … and, experienced vet or no, he couldn’t hide his own shock at having made this particular long-distance connection:
Yeah, judging by the look on Barnes’ face, I’m going to go ahead and guess he didn’t call “bank” on that one.
As weird as Barnes’ accidental triple was, this kind of thing happens more than you might think at the NBA level. To wit:
Heck, it might not even have been the weirdest bucket Barnes has ever gotten in a pro game:
… or, now that we mention it, the worst pass he’s thrown that’s led directly to a 3-pointer:
At least this time his team got the points.
Beyond being kind of ridiculous, Barnes’ I-Totally-Meant-To-Do-That-You-Guys 3 also capped a 22-8 third-quarter run that gave the Kings a 10-point advantage they’d never relinquish, as Sacramento went on to a 122-105 win behind a monster game from All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins (37 points, 11 rebounds, four steals, two assists and one block in 36 minutes) to improve to 7-10 on the season. Gay never did get that lob from Barnes, but he soldiered on just the same, finishing with 22 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, one steal and one block in 32 minutes.
Barnes chipped in seven points, six assists, four rebounds and a block in 19 minutes off Dave Joerger’s bench. His evening ended a little early, though, thanks to a much more characteristic Matt Barnes play — a perhaps-not-dirty-but-certainly-dangerous foul on Nets guard Sean Kilpatrick:
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With the Kings holding a commanding lead and just over 9 1/2 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Kilpatrick raced in from the left wing looking for a layup that would cut Brooklyn’s deficit to 16. Barnes, the last line of transition defense for Sacramento, decided against allowing a layup, going up to contest the shot and hitting Kilpatrick’s body first with his left arm before again making contact on the way down, sending Kilpatrick to the deck hard and leaving him in a heap along the baseline. The refs consulted the video replay and determined that Barnes’ haymaker constituted unnecessary and excessive contact warranting a flagrant foul-2, bringing with it an automatic ejection.
Kilpatrick would stay in the game and make both of his post-flagrant free throws, finishing with a Nets-high 22 points on 8-for-13 shooting to go with five rebounds, three assists and two steals in 30 minutes. Brooklyn made a charge after Barnes’ transgression, ripping off a 13-2 run that cut Sacramento’s lead to six with just under seven minutes remaining … and got Barnes a bit worried back in the locker room.
“I was scared there for a second because they went on a run, and I was like, man, did I cost the team the game?” Barnes said after the game, according to Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee. “So I was nervous back here (in the locker room), but we regained focus, went on a run of our own and closed the game out strong.”
It might not have been pretty, but in the end, it worked … just like Barnes’ alley-oop-that-wasn’t.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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