Wizards Come From Behind to Defeat Knicks in Thriller at NBA London 2019

Washington Wizards prevailed 101-100 over the New York Knicks on a goaltending call with 0.4 seconds remaining at The O2 Arena in London on Thursday night.

Allonzo Trier was called for the goaltend on a layup attempt by Thomas Bryant as time expired, punctuating a fightback from the Wizards, who had trailed by as many as 19 in the second half.

Bradley Beal scored 26 points and had 9 rebounds, and Otto Porter Jr. finished with a 20-points and 11-rebound double-double for the Wizards, who outscored the Knicks 24-11 in the fourth quarter.

Bradley Beal paid tribute to Bryant coming through in the clutch.

“He did a great basketball play, just rolled to the basket,” Beal said postgame. “I trusted him to be able to make the right play, whether it be kicking it out to the corner, or laying the ball up like he did.”

Head coach Scott Brooks was pleased with the defence played in the fourth.

“We didn’t play the defence we needed to play throughout the game during the first three quarters,” Brooks commented. “We defended in that fourth quarter, and that’s why we came away with the win.”

Emmanuel Mudiay scored 25 points to lead New York, whilst Luke Kornet added 16 points, including 12 in the first quarter. New York was making its third appearance in the NBA’s annual London game, whilst Washington were here for the first time.

Notes

• In what was a very nice touch from the league, the NBA paid tribute to the late Jimmy Rogers pre-game.
• Spent a couple of hours pre-game out in the foyer interviewing NBA fans – video coming soon – but a few takeaways: there was a lot of people who had travelled from abroad for the game (NBA has said fans from 39 different countries bought tickets), most knew nothing about British basketball, more than I expected could name Luol Deng as a British star, and when asked why there was a disconnect between NBA fans in the UK being interested in the domestic game, they all pointed to lack of media coverage, specifically TV.
• Despite the sell out, there were a lot of empty seats scattered around in the lower bowl; would assume they were unused corporate allocation.
• A kid ran onto the court after the final buzzer to hug Allonzo Trier – security caught slipping!
• In what has been well publicised, Enes Kanter, did not travel with the team for the game because of fears over his safety as an outspoken critic of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With John Wall and Kristaps Porzingis also out due to injury the game was missing a lot of the headline names.
• The league’s deputy commissioner Mark Tatum has spoken about the British basketball talent development system in this nice interview with MVP’s Mark Woods.
• The O2’s capacity for the game – which sold out in under an hour – is 18,689. It was the NBA’s ninth straight sold out regular season game in London.
• In his pre-game press conference, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver alluded to the league not returning to London next year for its regular season game, instead, strongly considering moving it to Paris, France.
• As always, a bunch of A-list celebrities were in attendance: musician Tinie Tempah, comedians Michael McIntyre and Joel Dommett, magician Dynamo and model Lara Stone, along with a whole host of Premier League footballers.

Do you like our work?

We have a tiny favour to ask. In 2018 we set out to make Hoopsfix sustainable by building our relationship directly with our readers. Up until now, Hoopsfix has been creating editorials, videos and podcasts to provide sorely missing coverage of the British game and its distinct culture and community.

We have funded Hoopsfix with our freelance work creating basketball media, but sadly that means not only does it fall behind our client’s priorities, but some of those clients are the same organisations we need to report objectively on putting us in a conflicted position.

We want to devote more time to our mission of helping British basketball reach its potential, and produce even more content for the basketball community by making Hoopsfix a sustainable 100% independent business funded directly by our readers through Patreon.

If everyone who enjoys our content chose to support us, our future would be much more secure. For as little as $3 per month, you can support Hoopsfix – and it only takes a minute.

We are tremendously honoured and humbled to have a community of people who value what we do, and we look forward to being at the forefront of the British game as it continues to evolve.

Support Hoopsfix