Devin Booker buries jumper at buzzer for second game-winner of season
Mar 11, 2017, 9:51 PM | Updated: 10:10 pm
BOOKER CALLS GAME#WeArePHX pic.twitter.com/dTxPEfSgGl
— Phoenix Suns (@Suns) March 12, 2017
The Phoenix Suns have 22 wins this season and four of them have come on a buzzer-beater.
Devin Booker’s jumper as time expired in Dallas gave the Suns a 100-98 win. He finished with 36 points, 25 of them coming in the second half and 14 in the fourth quarter.
It was a bizarre journey to get to the end of the last possession of the game.
Following a miss by Dallas, Phoenix did not call a timeout to set up a play and Booker brought the ball up the court. Then, with 19 seconds left and 14 on the shot clock, play was unexpectedly stopped by the officials. It was later determined that it was not their own doing for a stop of play, which clearly upset some of the Suns’ players, who did not want a break in the action.
After the ball was inbounded, Dallas guard Wesley Matthews fouled Booker and Matthews was not pleased with the call. While the Mavericks did have a foul to give, Matthews’ foul reset the shot clock, allowing the Suns to potentially have the last possession of the game.
Booker held the ball near half-court, and with four seconds left, he attacked Matthews, performed a spin move to create space at the top of the key and drilled a fadeaway jumper to win the game.
It is Booker’s second game-winning shot of the season and the fourth for the Suns as a team, the most of any team in the NBA.