Dangerous and fruitless as it often is to speak in absolutes, the pass by Toronto guard Kyle Lowry to teammate OG Anunoby at the end of Game Three of the Raptors’ playoff series against Boston last Thursday night has to rank among the best in NBA postseason history.
For those who haven’t seen it, the situation was this: Toronto was down two with 0.5 of a second left and inbounding from the right sideline, just over midcourt. Lowry lofted a 50-foot pass over Boston’s Tacko Fall — all 7-5 of him — to Anunoby on the opposite side of the floor, a feed so perfect that Anunoby was able to catch and release a 3-point attempt in an instant. His shot was true, giving the Raptors a 104-103 victory. And rather than being down 3-0 in the series, Toronto had made it 2-1; they squared things by beating the Celtics again Saturday night.
So yes, Lowry’s pass is on the short list of great ones. The others I would include would be Larry Bird’s feed to Dennis Johnson for the decisive basket in Game Five of the 1987 East semis, after Bird stole Isiah Thomas’ inbounds pass. (And by now all of us have heard Johnny Most’s raspy call: There’s a steal by Bird! Underneath to D.J.! He lays it in!)
Also on the list is John Stockton’s court-length beauty to Karl Malone (natch) for a layup in Game Four of the 1997 Finals against Chicago.
Because I love Bobby Jones, I will also include his flip to Clint Richardson after stealing Alton Lister’s pass in the 1983 Eastern Conference finals (at 50:42 of this video), a presence-of-mind play very similar to the one made by Bird.
Surely there are others I’m forgetting, but I would submit to you that none of the above is the greatest postseason pass in league annals. Rather, I would argue that the greatest of all didn’t even result in a basket.
Far as I can tell, there is no grainy black-and-white YouTube video of the play in question, a 95-foot off-the-backboard heave from Alex Hannum of the St. Louis Hawks to teammate Bob Pettit, a future Hall of Famer, in Game Seven of the 1957 Finals against Boston. For a description of the play, we must refer to Terry Pluto’s excellent 1992 book, “Tall Tales,” an oral history of the NBA’s early years.
That game was a double-overtime classic between the Hawks and the Celtics of Bill Russell and Bob Cousy, and came down to the final two seconds of the second extra period. St. Louis, trailing 125-123, was inbounding from its own baseline.
Hannum, a player-coach who a decade later would lead the Sixers to a title, was in the game because starting center Ed Macauley had fouled out. And in the final timeout huddle, he hatched his unorthodox plan.
As Macauley later told Pluto, “Alex said, ‘All right, I’m going to take the ball out-of-bounds. Pettit, I want you to stand at the opposite foul line. I’m going to throw the ball the length of the court, it’s going to hit the backboard. Then, Pettit, you’ll get the rebound and tip it in.’ There were nine guys around Hannum and we were all nodding like we knew what he was talking about. But I was like everyone else. I was thinking that Alex had a hard time hitting the backboard from 15 feet, so how was he going to do it from 94 feet?”
Indeed, Hannum averaged a modest six points a game on 35 percent shooting for his eight-year career. But Pettit recalled to Pluto that he “was so sure of himself” before this one-in-a-million play.
“It was a gamble,” Hannum told Pluto, “but Pettit was the greatest offensive rebounder I’d ever seen. I figured if I could get the ball on the board, we had a chance.”
Amazingly, it worked out almost exactly as Hannum planned. His pass hit the backboard and rim and the ball spilled off to Pettit.
Who missed the shot.
“I caught the ball in midair and shot it before I came down,” Pettit told Pluto. “The ball rolled around the rim and came out. Really, as crazy as it sounds, I should have made the shot. Alex’s pass was perfect.”
And, I would argue, the best ever.