the atlanta hawks beat the dallas mavericks by 26 points yesterday. things got ugly in the 3rd quarter (atlanta outscored dallas 35-20), and the result was never in doubt after that.
which makes me enjoy this particular possession, where jalen brunson sprinted to get open, even more:
what's praiseworthy is not that he made the shot or that he got so wide open (clearly aided by kevin huerter and bogdan bogdanović losing him), but the fact that jalen ran as hard as he did along the path that he took.
with the score as it was, he could've easily cut with less enthusiasm in a straight line or even not made the effort to cut at all. but he took the long way around, tracing the 3-point arc to maintain optimal spacing, and sprinted the entire way.
i'm sure it wasn't a conscious decision - his body probably just did it on its own. it's muscle memory for him now, a habit at this point.
when you do the little things right, repeatedly, it becomes second nature. stuff like this might not really matter in a random game in october when you're down by 21, but it will definitely make a difference over the course of a career.
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