WHO: Dallas Mavericks forward P.J. Washington

WHAT: A clutch performance in the NBA’s Western Conference Semifinals

WHY IT’S SO GREAT: In February, the Mavs made what fans worried was a desperation move: trading a top-two protected first-round draft pick and two players to the Charlotte Hornets for Washington and a pair of second-round picks. ESPN, grading the trade, gave the Mavs a D on their decision-making, with NBA analyst Kevin Pelton offering a brutal assessment: “The question here is what problem Washington is solving. Five years into his career, I’m still not sure what Washington is as an NBA player.” (The Hornets, meanwhile, got an A for getting a valuable return for Washington, who wasn’t even a full-time starter in Charlotte.) 

Dallas fans were even more upset. A common sentiment at the time can be found in a post from two months ago on the Mavericks Reddit forum: “I don’t mean to be a Negative Nellie but why on earth did we trade a top-2 protected 1st for PJ Washington?” The author posited that such a poor trade would not only cost the team a pick and doom its chances for the rest of the season, but it might lead the team’s brightest star, Luka Dončić, to depart via free agency. 

The knocks on Washington back then were that his three-point shooting had gotten worse over the course of his five-year pro career, that his true shooting percentage ranked in the bottom-third of all NBA players, that he averaged fewer than fifteen points per game, and that he was a poor defender. Washington didn’t exactly arrive with an all-star CV. But stats only tell part of a player’s story, and defenders of the deal argued that Washington, a former Dallas-area high school standout who grew up 26 miles down the Tollway from the American Airlines Center, could be transformed into a key contributor around Mavs stars Dončić and Kyrie Irving.  

During Dallas’s conference semifinal series against Oklahoma City, Washington proved his supporters right—and in Saturday’s decisive game six, he turned in his most clutch performance yet. Heading into the fourth quarter, with the Mavs down seven, the player from Frisco had hardly seen the court because of early foul trouble. But he proved himself critical over the final twelve minutes, accounting for nine points while his rookie teammate, Dereck Lively II (whose own story of helping Dallas reach the conference finals despite his mother’s death in April is equally meaningful), came through with key rebounds to keep the team alive. Finally, with 2.5 seconds on the clock and the Mavs down by a point, Williams got fouled on a three-point attempt and was given a chance to step to the line and end the Thunder’s season. The career 70.5 percent free-throw shooter sunk his first two foul shots to give Dallas a 117–116 lead; then Washington intentionally missed his attempt to force OKC—which had no time-outs and couldn’t stop the clock once Washington’s third free throw came off the rim—to heave a desperate full-court shot as time expired. The ball didn’t come close to the net, and thanks to Washington’s finishing touches, the Mavs are headed to the Western Conference Finals against the Minnesota Timberwolves.