The Portland Trail Blazers defeat the Denver Nuggets in four overtimes
Sixty-six years ago, on March 21, 1953, the Boston Celtics defeated the Syracuse Nationals 111-105 in four overtimes. Boston’s then star player, Bob Cousy, played 66 minutes and scored 50 points. “The game was stagnant,” Bob Cousy told NBA.com after the game. “Teams literally started sitting on the ball in the third quarter. That was the way the game was played: get a lead and put the ball in the icebox, while the paying customers started reading the program. The whole game slowed up.” However, that isn’t the case in present-day Portland. That night in 1953, Cousy scored 50 points, 30 of which would be coming at the foul line in what remains an NBA playoff record for most points made by free throws. Less than two years later, the NBA set up the twenty-four second shot clock, an innovation first created by then-Syracuse owner Danny Biasone, who was perhaps mindful of what his team went through during that four-OT loss. Now, after legendary greats like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and many more Hall of Famers have come and gone, another four overtime game in the NBA playoffs appeared on screens on May 4 when the Portland Trail Blazers defeated the Denver Nuggets 140-137. Their four-OT slugfest matched the Celtics-Nationals game sixty-six years ago as the longest in NBA postseason history.
The full game of the Trail Blazers and the Nuggets were an hour and eight minutes long (the average game without overtime lasts forty-eight minutes), the additional twenty minutes due to four overtimes. In the game, the stars on both sides, CJ McCollum and Nikola Jokic, each had a playing time over an hour, with 60 minutes and 64 minutes respectively. Aside from the two MVPs of the game, 5 players (Damian Lillard and Enes Kanter form the Trail Blazers, and Jamal Murry, Paul Millsap and Gary Harris from the Nuggets) from both teams all played over the regular game time, which is 48 minutes. During the fourth period, commentators predicted that whoever won this game might become the winner of the series. As expected, the Trail Blazers’ comeback against the Nuggets let them win the series 4-3 and advance to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since the start of the century, where they will face the neighboring states’ only team left in the playoffs, the Golden State Warriors.
Featured Image – Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum celebrates after making a shot, while Denver Nuggets Center Nikola Jokic goes for the inbound Courtesy of Craig Mitchelldyer
by Andy Kim