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" Ask most people to name the best play in basketball and they&amp;#039;ll give you some nonsense about breakaway dunks, buzzer beaters, or ankle-breaking crossovers. If you&amp;#039;re asking sadists, they might mention the blocked shot.  They would all be wrong. The best play in basketball is not one that produces only joy (or despair if you&amp;#039;re rooting for the other team). Rather, it forces fans to experience both emotions in rapid succession, first resignation and then elation. It&amp;#039;s like knowing you have to eat airport food for dinner and then finding a Cinnabon in C Terminal. The play I&amp;#039;m talking about doesn&amp;#039;t have a name, so I gave it one: It&amp;#039;s the &amp;quot;No! No! No! Yes!&amp;quot; (NNNY) and you can be damn sure you&amp;#039;ll see it during the NCAA Tournament. Here&amp;#039;s how it happens: The ball is in the hands of the most confident player on the team you love, or for those who only drink from the chalice of college hoops in March, the team you picked in the office pool. The shot clock is at 25 and he waves his teammates around the perimeter. He denies a screen, the whole building wants him to pass the ball but knows he&amp;#039;s not going to. He attempts a crossover, then another, and 30 feet from the basket, lets fly. &amp;quot;No! No! No!&amp;quot; you shout. And then as the ball flicks through the net, &amp;quot;Yes!&amp;quot; Here&amp;#039;s an example:       It&amp;#039;s perfect. The NNNY isn&amp;#039;t the best play in basketball because it requires skill or athleticism. Obviously neither is necessary. It&amp;#039;s the best play in basketball because requires fearlessness, an unwavering confidence in the face of absurd improbably.  As much as I love what the NNNY says about a player, its true gift is what it does to the fan. The play provides a half-second roller-coaster of emotion sending fans from disbelief, to anger to elation. Those first two things might not seem good, but they make that third one so much better. It also has a tendency to humble fans who think their decision-making is superior to the people on their TV. Reminder: there&amp;#039;s a reason they&amp;#039;re in the tournament and you&amp;#039;re watching in team logo Crocs. I say tournament because the NNNY is exclusive to college basketball, where yelling &amp;quot;No!&amp;quot; is the only logical reaction to a 25% three-point shooter pulling up from deep. NBA players are better and don&amp;#039;t elicit the same reaction when they let fly from 30 feet since they can actually be expected to make it. The player most responsible for my love of the NNNY is Russ Smith, the six-foot shooting guard at Louisville with a reputation for feats of surpassing ridiculousness. Smith would only pull the ball out of a fast break if he encountered a one-on-six, and he&amp;#039;s the rare player who can elicit a NNNY on a drive to the basket. That kind of score-at-will mentality can be frustrating when it leads to confidence in the face of continued failure. But with that comes those moments when he does everything wrong and result is so right. The flipside to this remarkable play that deserve its rightful place among Sportscenter&amp;#039;s Top 10 are shots that make fans yell &amp;quot;No! No! No!&amp;quot; and then a final &amp;quot;No!&amp;quot; I call that the NNNN, and it&amp;#039;s the worst play in basketball. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a21029/bball-best-play/?src=rss>