INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Aaron Gordon wished he didn’t need to look back. The sooner he got out of Intuit Dome, the better.
Alas, he had no choice but to turn around and wait out a suspenseful review before he could sprint to the locker room, and he’ll have to return again next week for a Game 6. That’s because his slam dunk captured the Nuggets to a series-tying Game 4 win in a photo finish, 101-99 over the Clippers, on Saturday.
It was the first buzzer-beating dunk to win a playoff game in NBA history.
“Nice pass,” Gordon said, smirking.
It wasn’t a pass. Source: The “passer” himself.
Gordon snatched the ball out of the air and flushed it after Nikola Jokic lofted a desperate fade-away shot, his signature “Sombor Shuffle.” It fluttered wide left, a proper air-ball. “This is going to be bad,” Jokic said when asked what he was thinking as the shot left his hands.
But Clippers point guard James Harden neglected to box out Gordon, Denver’s consummate junkyard dog of a power forward who had accepted Harden’s invite to throw hands earlier in the game.
Usually, Gordon camps in the dunker spot along the baseline and catches lobs from Jokic, sometimes decoyed as floaters. Together, they are one of the most potent alley-oop duos in the NBA. So, spectators could be forgiven for thinking this was all a master plan, that Jokic was disguising a pass as a shot in an act of four-dimensional chess.
No, this time, it was just the ultimate clean-up play by Gordon.
Jokic was N.C. State’s Dereck Whittenburg. Gordon was Lorenzo Charles.
“That (game) is going to be on NBA TV someday,” Nuggets interim coach David Adelman said. “… I’m glad it’ll be on Nuggets day and not Clippers day.”
First, the Nuggets wilted. They led by 22 early in the fourth quarter but could not withstand an earthquake of a comeback from their hosts. They stopped defending. They gave up blow-by layups and dunks. They over-helped from the corners and got burned by open 3s. Their shots stopped falling against a zone defense. Their legs looked tired.
Bogdan Bogdanovic out-hustled his countryman Jokic for an offensive rebound and put-back layup with just over a minute to play, stunningly giving Los Angeles a one-point lead. It capped a 32-9 run. Jokic answered with a lucky bounce from the foul line to pull even. Then he drained a nasty fader in the post to reclaim a 99-97 advantage with 16.1 seconds left. Clippers center Ivica Zubac tied it with another put-back, setting up Gordon’s theatrics.
“Air-balls are really hard to defend against,” Gordon said. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”
Gordon galloped across the court and into the tunnel to Denver’s locker room before realizing the play was under review. Officials determined the ball was off his fingertips with 0.1 seconds left.
“It has to be out of his hand when that red light is on,” crew chief Zach Zarba said in a pool report interview. “That’s what we’re looking for. It’s not the cylinder of the rim. It’s whether it’s in contact with his hand or not when that red light comes on.”
The Nuggets will host a pivotal Game 5 on Tuesday after two much-needed days off in a deadlocked series. Four starters, including Jokic, played the entire fourth quarter.
“Trying to find breaks at the right time. Using the TV timeouts as best we can,” interim coach David Adelman said before opening tip, stressing that his starters would have to play intense minutes — especially without injured sixth man Russell Westbrook. “You hate to use timeouts to rest players, but sometimes you have to do that in these games. … It’s Game 4. We’re down 2-1. Our main people, they’re gonna roll. They’re gonna play a lot.”
The series reached a boiling point early in the game. With six seconds remaining in the first half, Christian Braun purposefully reached in on Harden, as he often does when the Nuggets have a foul to give before halftime. Harden took exception and got in Braun’s amused-looking face, causing Gordon and Jokic to intervene. Harden tried to take a swipe at Gordon’s face, setting Gordon off. As he pursued Harden through a crowd of Nuggets and Clippers, his hand made seemingly inadvertent contact with Norman Powell’s face.
“I think CB was doing a good job pressuring (Harden),” Gordon said. “And I can’t let nobody step to my young fella. So I was just running in giving him backup. This is what playoff basketball is about.”
That was the extent of the fireworks show. Sides were separated, and the officials determined nobody had acted out enough to warrant an ejection. Six offsetting technical fouls were issued to Harden, Powell, Kris Dunn, Gordon, Braun and Jokic. No free throws. Carry on.
Before the first possession of the second half, Harden and Gordon even appeared to be laughing while they had a quick chat.
Jokic was unstoppable (save for one air-ball), finishing with 36 points, 21 rebounds, eight assists and two steals. Michael Porter Jr. and Christian Braun scored 17 points each. All five starters played 42 or more minutes. Adelman used four reserves, none of them more than 12 minutes. Vlatko Cancar even appeared for two.
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