Timeouts Continued

If you have a timeout available to you what is your philosophy?  Do you want to draw something up in the timeout or let your players play it out?  One team over the weekend had a timeout left and didn't use it for either of the teams final possessions down one score.  Another team had an inbound play down one score with 15 seconds left and elected not to use the timeout. 

I think it depends on your players and the situation.  3 times we had the ball in late game situations and twice I let them play, but once felt like we needed the timeout.  I will expand on two of them...

1 - we were up the entire 4th on the road and a team hit a 3pt shot with 7 seconds left to go up two.  During the previous timeout we decided if the team scored we would try to inbound it quick to our pg (our pg was a scoring machine in transition, ended this game with 45 points) and let him make a play.  We executed perfectly and had a great fast break opportunity and the official stopped the game to fix the net on the previous 3pt shot which forced us to inbound vs a set defense.  I decided to let them play as long as we inbounded to our pg and the other team stayed in m2m.  I didn't want to call timeout and let them double team him or change defenses so I told the official if anyone besides #2 gets the ball I want a timeout.  They stayed man and we were able to get our best player the ball and he ended up attacking the rim and getting fouled. It was far better than anything I could draw up (he made both, sent it to overtime and we won).

2 - The game was tied with 30 seconds left and we had an inbound play under our own basket. None of our inbound plays had led to a score and we had turned the last 2 over.  I did not have the confidence in any of the plays we had put in so I burned our final timeout to draw something up.  It didn't work.  We didn't execute still turned the ball over and the other team hit a 3pt shot with 5 seconds left.  I was out of timeouts or I probably would have called one at this point, but to our team's credit we got the ball in quick to our best player and he made a 3pt at buzzer to send it into overtime (we ended up losing in double ot).

I think the point here is to have a plan, but be flexible.  Sometimes you need to trust your best players to make plays and sometimes you need to stop the action and trust you will execute better out of a timeout than your opponent.