WASHINGTON – Just over a week ago, in the wee hours of April 11 in China, Ty Lawson was the property of the Shandong High Speed Golden Stars of the Chinese Basketball Association, having played 37 minutes in a Game 7 loss to the Guangsha Southern Lions in the league semifinals.
But his season wasn’t over. With the slim advantage of a 12-hour time change, executives from the Washington Wizards worked feverishly to secure the necessary clearances from the Golden Stars, the CBA and FIBA to sign the veteran NBA point guard minutes before 8:00 p.m. EST on April 11 for him to be eligible for the Wizards in their first-round playoffs series against the Toronto Raptors.
Even though this was all taking place in the middle of the night in China. Lawson was on the edge of his seat.
“I was excited,” he said after the Wizards practiced at Capital One arena Thursday in advance of Game 3 of the series which resumes Friday night. “Who doesn’t want to be in the NBA? I was excited. Once I got that call, I was on that plane.”
That plane got him to Los Angeles on April 12. A red-eye got him to Washington on Friday, April 13, in time for his first practice with his new team, and a charter got him to Toronto late Friday afternoon. That night a team official ran into Lawson wandering around the lobby of their hotel trying to stay up until midnight as he tried to adjust to his latest time zone.
Still groggy, he didn’t play in Game 1 of the series on Saturday, but the strangest part of Lawson’s journey came at the four-minute mark of Game 2 on Tuesday, when the 30-year-old heard his name called and he had to make the 40-foot walk from the Wizards bench to the scorer’s table at the Air Canada Centre.
“It was a little bit of a shock,” said Lawson, who spent the first six years of his career with the Denver Nuggets before a series of alcohol-related offenses caused him to slide out of the league after stints in Houston, Indiana and Sacramento. “I was like, ‘who?’ But I got my feet wet, hit my first shot and I felt like I was back at home.”
The Wizards – who had been pursuing Lawson since the NBA trade deadline but couldn’t pry him out of his contract in China — are glad to have him.
“Ty’s a really good basketball player,” said Wizards head coach Scott Brooks. “He has a lot of great experience and there were probably times in Denver when he was [close] to being an all-star. We knew when we picked him up that he was going to give us a spark somewhere. We’re glad he was on our team. He’s smart, he’s tough, he’s an aggressive player; he’s a good shooter, he can get to the basket and he knows how to make the right plays. He’s another guy that can push the pace and find shooters in transition. A really good pickup for us.
Down 2-0 in the series, Lawson could be the wildest of wild cards as the Wizards try pull even with the Raptors.
Lawson’s 31 minutes in Game 2 were a huge factor in Washington coming back from being down by 23 points late in the first half to pulling within five with 7:52 to play in the fourth quarter before the Raptors asserted control down the stretch.
Lawson finished with 14 points and eight assists while shooting 4-of-5 from the three-point line. He finished with a team-best net rating of 14.2 and his pairing with John Wall in the second half as Washington went with a small lineup gave the Raptors fits.
“His speed is a factor,” said Raptors head coach Dwane Casey said of Lawson. “We have to understand what he is trying to do to us. Some of the young guys haven’t seen him. I don’t know if Delon [Wright] has ever played against Lawson in the NBA, maybe in the summer. But his speed is a different level, but you also have to understand what he is looking for in those situations. Hopefully we will do a better job of reading what he’s trying to do and engaging his speed and Wall’s speed better. We have not done a good of gauging their speed.”
Lawson proved effective running the point in the absence of Wall in an eight-minute stint in the first half as he recorded seven assists – two at the rim for Ian Mahinmi and five on the perimeter for Mike Scott, who was 4-of-5 from three. In his second-half stint Lawson proved a good complement to Wall off the ball as he knocked down three triples, all assisted by Wall. Lawson’s contributions were a welcome boost as Bradley Beal has struggled so far in the series, shooting just 39 per cent from the floor and 27 per cent from three.
The success of Washington’s small lineup has observers speculating the Wizards might adjust their starting lineup – they’ve been outscored 72-50 in the first quarters so far – or at least bring Lawson and Scott into the game earlier.
Their defensive flexibility was as important as anything else, said Lawson. They were able to switch easily and avoid doubling Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan on the ball, which has led to a lot of open threes as the Wizards get scrambled in rotation. In the second half of Game 2 Toronto shot just 2-of-13 from deep, compared with 27-of-52 in the first six quarters of the series.
“We played switch defence,” said Lawson. “They weren’t scoring as easily as they were in the first half because in the first half we were trapping and [they were] finding the easy pass and kicking it out for wide-open threes. In the second half they weren’t getting that at all … when we start switching they didn’t know what to do, they had no offence for that. I was a little bit surprised.”
The worrisome thing for the Raptors is Lawson should get more comfortable as the series goes on. He said he only knew about 60 or 70 per cent of the Wizards playbook by Game 2 and has been studying up on an iPad to grasp the rest and more of the options on the ones he does know.
Also, Capital One Arena is just on the edge of Chinatown, bringing Lawson home in more ways than one.
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