As I was writing last night's entry on San Antonio's Michael Finley, who hit 8-of-9 on three-pointers as the Spurs closed out Denver Wednesday night in the teams' NBA first-round play-off series (see below), I had the Dallas-Golden State game on TV in the background. Wouldn't you know it, the Warriors' Stephen Jackson went on a three-point barrage of his own, which I briefly alluded to in the midst of my Finley write-up. Now, I'd like to discuss Jackson's performance in a little more depth.

In commenting on Finley's night, I stated that his made three-pointers tended to be separated by long amounts of time, no less than about three minutes between any pair of them. Also, some of the intervals between made threes were punctuated by missed two-point attempts. This did not fit the image of a hot-handed player "knocking down a barrage of shots in rapid succession, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom."

As I'm writing this last night, I'm seeing Jackson go on a streak that did fit the above image.

As shown in this play-by-play sheet, Jackson made his only two trey attempts of the first quarter and his only trey attempt of the second quarter.

In the third quarter is where things really got interesting. From when there was 9:11 to go in the quarter to 6:41 left (a window of exactly 2 minutes and 30 seconds), Jackson made FOUR straight three-pointers. Now that's what I'm talking about!

Jackson's spurt launched a 24-3 run by Golden State against Dallas, stretching a 56-54 Warrior lead out to 80-57. Jackson had only one more three-point attempt on the evening, a fourth quarter miss, which left him at 7-of-8 from behind the arc (box score).

Whether long-term analyses would show Jackson to be a streaky three-point shooter (i.e., that his probability of a make goes up after making previous shots), I don't know. But seeing the same player hit four treys in such a short time span certainly was entertaining!

***

On a completely different matter, Ed Hartig sent in a note to the SABR-L e-mail discussion list, informing everyone that:

Cub Derrek Lee has hit a double in each of his last 8 games. I found six other stretches of players since 1957 with doubles in 7 consecutive games - but no other of 8 or more.