The only other player who's had any similar success this year for Adelman is Luke Ridnour, who defeated Utah on Feb. 22 with a floater at the buzzer. But he also missed final-second threes that would have tied a game against the Lakers on March 9 (yes, that game, the one in which the Timberwolves season died with the quick snap of a few tendons) and won a March 15 overtime loss to the Jazz in regulation.
Everyone else – Michael Beasley, Wayne Ellington, J.J. Barea and Martell Webster – has failed in those last-second shots, which included one particularly embarrassing moment in Denver when, with Minnesota down by three and a second remaining, Webster decided to make a dunk, securing the loss. Moments like that, the ones that leave people shaking their heads and bordering on laughter, are the best arguments for hero ball, and even looking at the Timberwolves' track record, it's hard not to want to hit Adelman in the head every time he designs a play that doesn't get the ball to Love in those situations. But look more closely at the times when Love gets the ball, and you'll see why he can't always. Love can really only be effective on deep shots because he's often double-teamed as the clock ticks down.
"I think the guy you try to get the shot for has to be a playmaker, and sometimes the defense takes things away," Adelman said. "You have to have counters. Guys have to have confidence to go ahead and take the shot."
According to a story by Henry Abbott in ESPN the Magazine, Synergy Sports Technology (which touts itself as a "high volume video-indexing statistical engine and online retrieval platform" on its website) has revealed one particularly disturbing thing about so-called hero ball: when they're double- or even triple- teamed, go-to scorers like Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Anthony almost never give up the ball when they get it in the game's final seconds. That would be fine, except players like Anthony and Bryant, who want and get that last shot more often than their teammates, are often unsuccessful.
Even when they're rendered the least effective players on the court, stars often can't accept it. That's the flaw of hero ball, the Achilles heel of all coaches who blindly put their faith in one player to win close games. That's why Adelman has such specific game plans for those last seconds, why sometimes he designs for the ball to land in the hands of Ridnour or Barea or really anyone else. Adelman has said several times this season that it all comes down to confidence, that his players all need to believe that they can make those shots.
"Coach has a lot of confidence," Derrick Williams said. "If you're open, take the shot. Make it or miss it, as long as your open, shoot, and he can live with it."
Adelman's schemes can make him look very, very smart, as he did after that Ridnour floater, or downright boneheaded, as he did when Barea hovered, overmatched, around the three-point line before missing a shaky jumper against Golden State last week. But when the Timberwolves are healthy, their style of play is the antithesis of hero ball. It's passing and teamwork, concepts foreign to systems focused on just one player.
So yes, Love will get the ball in the future in many games' final seconds – because someday, the Timberwolves will be close to a win again, no matter how bad things look now – and sometimes he'll score. Other times he'll miss. He might be the Timberwolves' hero, but he'll never be the only player whose name is discussed in the huddle with a fraction of a second to go.
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