Dallas Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving didn’t even need to do it.
With the Dallas Mavericks up 102-82 over the Los Angeles Clippers with just six minutes left in the final game of their first-round matchup on May 4 in this season’s playoffs, Mavericks forward Luka Dončić missed a shot in jump. The ball was thrown to Irving, who was standing behind the 3-point line, but Irving also missed.
However, another offensive rebound put the ball back into Irving’s hands. There was nothing to play for. The Mavericks led the series 3-2 and, due to the lack of effort on the boards, the Clippers had given up on the game and the series.
Los Angeles forward PJ Tucker picked up Irving behind the 3-point line. Irving turned to the right and immediately crossed to the left. But that was a hesitation dribble, and the Mavericks guard went right again, making poor Tucker look like he was dancing on TikTok trying to keep up. Irving took a step together to create more separation and launched a 3-point slant jumper as the shot clock ticked down to 4 seconds.
Nothing more than net. Plus a foul to make it a four-point play. The Dallas home crowd went crazy. You can see Dončić at the bottom of the screen, walking away with his hands on his head as the basket goes in, like he’s rapper Drake. witnessing then-Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant rupture his Achilles tendon.
There were still 5 and a half minutes left in the game, but it was over at that moment. Irving and the Mavericks had taken the soul of the Clippers in about 10 seconds. There was no recovery from this, no late streak was going to keep this series competitive.
Irving, through some crossovers and a nearly impossible jump shot, had designed the Clippers, the final nail in the coffin.
“Stylin’ on ’em” is that moment in a game when a player and/or team does something (a move, a shot, a pass) that is so cold that it completely demoralizes the opponent, making the rest of the game debatable. : It’s over. Styling them unofficially marks the end of a game. With such a seismic level of contempt, recipients of the style simply cannot recover. It can’t be found in any science books, but that’s a fact.
It could be a nasty crossover, a breakaway dunk, or a no-look pass. Or some combination of them. In Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals, the Minnesota Timberwolves led the Denver Nuggets by 22 with just under 10 minutes left in the third quarter. The game was probably over when the Wolves went on a 29-5 run to end the first quarter, but Wolves guard Anthony Edwards, who promised a Nuggets employee after a Game 5 loss that the he would see again in a Game 7 that It wasn’t a certainty, he was looking for a reason to perform his trick. Getting his defender Michael Porter Jr. off the floor with the hesi dribble was bad enough, but then going straight into the lane for an uncontested two-handed dunk was so dirty that Nuggets coach Michael Malone looked dejected when he called. time-out. A 24-point lead in today’s NBA isn’t insurmountable, but who are we kidding? That was the game right there. The Wolves ended up winning 115-70, making it the second-largest margin of victory ever achieved by a team facing elimination, and then rallied from a 20-point deficit in Game 7 to win the series.
When designing a team, it’s as if for a brief moment the NBA becomes an AND-1 mixtape, where bragging takes precedence over boring terms like “fundamentals” or “schemes.” It’s disrespectful, it’s rude, it’s intimidating. But at the same time, there is beauty in the ability to become so distracted by embarrassing your opponent and still accomplish a feat of athletic prowess.
Exhibitionism has a very negative connotation, but that’s what it is. That’s when basketball becomes less about competition and business and more about joy and entertainment. It’s about taking a normal play in a game and putting a little more odor on it as an exclamation point. It’s the embodiment of yelling “This is over” or “Get these guys out of here.”
You could say that styling someone is a sign of disrespect, but that would be disrespectful to the word disrespect. This is more than that. Embarrassing someone can be accidental. This is intentional ridicule. They rub it in your face so you never forget that play from that game that season. The stylist wants this moment to be a highlight moment, a viral moment, a Top 5 moment in one of those YouTube videos about the most incredible plays of the season.
Despite the seemingly free nature of basketball, it is actually quite calculated. It is a series of movements and counterattacks. It’s chess, where you always think one step ahead of your opponent. Styling them is not that. What is the formula for a no-look alley-oop from half court? I doubt “Eastbay kills on a fast break” was in the scouting report. All style and grace goes out the window.
Remember that iconic photo of guard Dwyane Wade throwing an alley-oop to then-Miami Heat teammate LeBron James? That happened within the first four minutes of the first quarter against the Milwaukee Bucks during the 2010-11 season. The score was only 6-2.
But this was the era of the Heat’s Big 3 when they took the league by storm. James gave a defensive rebound to Wade, who began running down the court in transition, with James running behind him. Wade, still looking forward, passed the ball behind him, which James collected at the free throw line before swinging his right arm back like a slingshot and ferociously dunking the ball. Wade and James did that because 1.) they could and 2.) they wanted the world to know that these other guys, like most of the rest of the league at the time, didn’t stand a chance.
What makes designing them so beautiful is having the audacity to do it. The margin for error in basketball can be very small, so deviating from the game plan just to add a little fuss is pretty bold.
During the 2024 play-in tournament, Chicago Bulls guard Coby White was a step or two ahead of Miami Heat guard Tyler Herro when Herro threw a behind-the-back pass to the left corner for a 3-pointer by Caleb Martin. White was in the air, so Herro could have made a standard pass. But no, with the Heat already up 11 points and a playoff spot at stake, Herro wanted this to be the death knell. He didn’t have to do this, but he wanted to do it, and so he did it. The Heat would win by 21 points.
Whenever Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert has the ball in his hands, he looks like me: uncoordinated, clumsy, likely to lead to disaster. But taking cues from teammate Edwards, who directly trash-talked Durant in Game 1 of the Wolves’ first-round series against the Phoenix Suns, Gobert had so little regard for a team with three All-Stars that became the ultimate Magic Johnson by dropping a no-look pass to Karl-Anthony Towns in the fourth quarter of Game 2 when Minnesota was only eight points ahead. It was an omen that the Timberwolves would sweep the Suns.
Styling them can also be vindictive. The Los Angeles Lakers had blown double-digit leads in two of the first three games of their first-round series against the Denver Nuggets. With the Nuggets trying to come back from another double-digit deficit in Game 4, the Lakers finally decided enough was enough. Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell came off a screen, slowed to contain a collapsing Denver defense and kept his eyes off target as he lobbed a no-look lob to a slashing James, who connected hard . The Nuggets, who had been fighting for possession earlier, looked dejected after James’ head-down dunk as they went back on offense, which quickly ended in a turnover. Russell dumped Morton’s entire container of salt on the wound when he hit a hotly contested 3-pointer off a turnover. The Lakers won 119-108. But Nuggets guard Jamal Murray’s game-winner in Game 5, his second winner of the series, ended that series at five games.
And therein lies the beauty of giving style to your opponent: they may eventually return the favor.
Basketball is beautiful for several reasons. It’s the way NBA players make the skill look so easy. They are those decisive moments in which the best players take advantage of the circumstances to lead their team to victory. It’s even about how wins and losses affect fans on an emotional level. But at its most primal level, basketball is about beating your opponent into submission. It’s just that his style brings a certain arrogance to victory.
Game winners are great and ankle breakers are unforgettable, but those moments when all the care and concern disappears and the only goal is to tell these guys to get off the court? What more could you want?
Martenzie Johnson is a senior writer at Andscape. Her favorite movie moment is when Django said, “Do you guys want to see something?”
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