Be honest. How many times have you watched Cameron Johnson’s game-winning triple in the past 24 hours? His buzzer-beating shot last night not only set Footprint Arena ablaze and handed the Phoenix Suns their 51st win, but also resembled a play to tell your grandkids, so if you’ve hit the replay button northwards of 10, 20, or 50 times already, there’s no judgement on our end.
The whole sequence started with a missed free throw by New York Knicks guard Alec Burks that hit the back iron and was then corralled by Mikal Bridges. Without any timeouts and roughly seven second to go, Phoenix needed to push.
Cameron Payne took the ball and darted up the floor, drawing almost every New York defender with him. Johnson stopped dead in his tracks right around the three point line though, letting all those Spirit Halloween jerseys fly by. Payne then threw the rock back to Johnson like a running back on flea-flicker play. Johnson let it fly, first finding glass—and then nylon.
Johnson’s desperation heave also pushed his scoring total up to 38 points for evening—now a career-high mark. It also allowed him to finish 9-12 from deep .
Now with a day off, Johnson’s shot will likely continue to reel in views over and over again, both by the Phoenix faithful and anyone outside of the Big Apple who considers themself a basketball fan. In doing that though, why not take a few steps back and look at all the other game-winning buckets thrown up by the Suns?
Of course including Johnson’s dagger from last night, the top 10 buzzer beaters in Suns history go as follows.