The Panathinaikos guard beat the buzzer twice from mid-court in a sublime outing
Kendrick Nunn fired on all cylinders on a career night against Barcelona
Article
3 Mins read
Regular Season
Round 13 of 34
Group Regular Season
w
l
l
w
w
l
l
l
l
w
Beating the end-of-quarter buzzer once is enough to get fans off their seats. Doing so twice from mid-court is more than enough to explain why Kendrick Nunn is considered one of the best scorers to have ever stepped foot on European soil.
The Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens guard pulled off a sublime display against FC Barcelona at OAKA on Tuesday night, when he beat the buzzer in each of the first three quarters of the game.
The first came thanks to a mid-court buzzer-beater with just his first shot of the game to give Panathinaikos a 25-19 lead heading into the second period. Then, Nunn stepped up again in the dying embers of the quarter and tied the game at 45-45 heading the break with an off-balanced jumper, despite Barcelona center Jan Vesely being all over him and practically blocking his view.
Yet, his third buzzer-beating bucket was the one that produced the most hands-on-head reactions in the stands. Barcelona had taken a double-digit lead (55-66) with 3:17 minutes remaining in the third and held a 60-69 cushion with three seconds left. Enter Nunn, who hit yet another mid-court bucket to cut the difference to 6 heading into the fourth.
“I guess when the time is coming you only get one shot,” Nunn told EuroLeague TV after the game. “Same shot, just long distance. I practice them a little bit, so credit to that.”
That was the first of three triples in a row hit by Nunn across the last two quarters, with the last one making it 69-69. The Panathinaikos star finished the game with a career-high 29 points, having gone 5 for 9 from deep – two of which were from way downtown - and 6 for 8 from inside the arc.
The last quarter turned into a back-and-forth affair, with Nunn coming to the fore and netting 12 points including 2 clutch free throws to extend Panathinaikos’s lead to 89-86 with 12 seconds to go.
“In the last quarter we improved our defense, but we had a problem on offense because they closed too much in the paint and we found a way by putting Dinos Mitoglou at the ‘5’ position and opening the court,” Panathinaikos head coach Ergin Ataman explained on EuroLeague TV. “Kendrick found more space to attack and Dinos found three-point shots, too.”
The Greens opened the double-round week with a morale-boosting victory after two straight defeats. On Thursday, Panathinaikos travels to Serbia, where it will face an in-form Partizan Mozzart Bet Belgrade which is on a three-game winning run.
To snap that streak, the Greeks will lean on Nunn, who has netted at least 19 points in six consecutive games and showed on Tuesday night that he has the skillet to score from anywhere on the court, regardless of the circumstances.