Nuggets Game-Winner Gives Flashbacks to Suns' ‘Valley Oop’

This immediately brought back flashbacks for Suns fans to when Deandre Ayton downed the Clippers with an inbounds alley-oop dunk off a pass from Jae Crowder to give Phoenix an improbable 104-103 victory. 

Even though the clock originally expired after Ayton’s dunk, Gordon became the first player in playoffs history with a game-winning, buzzer-beating dunk, as the clock was reset to 0.7 seconds after Ayton’s dunk. 

Ayton’s slam became known as the “Valley Oop,” and the Suns went up 2-0 in the series after it. Phoenix would go onto to defeat LA in six games to advance to the 2021 NBA Finals, where it lost to the Milwaukee Bucks. 

Now, Ayton is on the Blazers and the Suns are out of the playoffs after a very underwhelming season, while the Nuggets are hoping that Gordon’s dunk will have give them momentum to win the series, especially after Denver blew a 22-point lead before the miraculous finish.

Another similarity between the two plays is that both Gordon and Ayton played at Arizona and both won Pac-12 Freshman of the Year (Gordon in 2013-14 and Ayton, who was also Pac-12 Player of the Year, in 2017-18).