Somebody Fucked Up

We are zooming ahead to the very end of Wednesday night's semifinal game between the New York Liberty and Atlanta Dream, which the Dream won in overtime, 101-98, to take a 2-0 series lead. After Angel Reese hit two free throws to put the Dream up by three, the Liberty had one more chance to engineer a potential game-tying shot with four seconds to play. This is what they came up with: https://youtu.be/N2StGRISYLY?t=730 An astute observer may notice the little orange tick under the words "New York" on ESPN's box score. That represents the Liberty's remaining reset timeout, which allows a team to advance the ball to half court, but does not allow them to huddle and draw up a play. The reset timeout was put into the WNBA rule book for this very situation—coaches are meant to save them for moments like these, so as to prevent close games from ending on totally hopeless possessions in which the trailing team has very little chance of even getting a shot at the rim. Liberty head coach Chris DeMarco did not call his reset timeout, though, leaving his players to struggle through a hopeless final possession in which Breanna Stewart's shot did not even touch the rim.

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