Craig Ehlo is still recovering from The Shot

The image is forever etched in Cleveland sporting lore, a symbol of a generation reduced to a footnote by one Michael Jeffrey Jordan. MJ, rising at the free throw line, seeing his shot — The Shot — fall, and celebrating with a leaping fist pump.

In the background, the man tasked with defending Jordan, Craig Ehlo, falls to his knees. Some 16 years later, The Shot is still very much a part of Ehlo’s life, according to a New York Times story by Harvey Araton.

Ehlo resisted reminiscing over The Shot for years, but he has come to accept its legendary status.

“The first four or five years after it happened, it was, like, enough, let’s move on,” Ehlo said. “I got tired of seeing it and people saying it. But after a while, I realized it was the situation every athlete wants to be in, my signature moment. I just decided, O.K., let me just ride this pony.”

Ehlo, it is widely forgotten, played one of his finest games in the deciding contest. He scored a team-high 24 points in 27 minutes off the bench, shooting a tidy 9-of-15 from the field. He scored a go-ahead bucket with three seconds to go off of a nifty give-and-go inbounds play. Ehlo passed the ball in to Larry Nance, who gave it right back to a cutting Ehlo, who beat Craig Hodges to the rim for a layup.

Alas, those three seconds left were all Jordan needed. MJ finished with 44, including the famous final two.

Ehlo dared to talk a little trash to Jordan before the last play.

“Mr. Jordan, I can’t let you score,” he said in his Texas twang.

“I thought I might get into his head a little,” Ehlo said. Jordan grinned, wickedly, leading Ehlo to retrospectively concede, “Maybe I should have just called him Michael.”

[Head coach Lenny] Wilkens left Brad Sellers, the player inbounding, unguarded, allowing Nance to briefly harass Jordan as he came out high to receive the ball. Ehlo, staying back, drifted left, and that, he said, proved fatal when Jordan broke free off the dribble.

“Instead of being in my defensive slide, I was running to catch up and challenge,” he said. “I went up from the side, my hand in his face. He hung for a split second as I flew by.”

Ehlo played for the Atlanta Hawks after the Cavs, and finished his career with the Seattle SuperSonics.¹ He had long had back problems, and underwent major surgery in 2010. By 2013, he had developed an addiction to painkillers. He was arrested in that year under strange circumstances,² quit his job as assistant coach at Eastern Washington, and entered rehab. He has been doing well since.

“I was embarrassed to be arrested,” he said. “But it brought my addiction to the front, got me into treatment and that allowed me to rebuild the relationship with my wife.”

The Shot will forever stick with Ehlo, but he seems to have made peace with it.

“The greatest player made a great play,” Ehlo said. “But what do we tell our kids — do your best? I did my best.”

Before coaching at Eastern Washington, Ehlo spent summers working at Nike basketball camps around the country, including LeBron James’ camp in Akron. When they first met, LeBron told Ehlo that he loved his Cavs teams. Later, Ehlo was frank with James about how he is (and will be) compared to Jordan.

Ehlo told him, “Until you get six or seven rings, Michael will always be the better player.”

James told him, “I’ll just have to prove you wrong.”

1. R.I.P. [↩]
2. “There was a family dispute, an arrest in connection with first-degree reckless burning (of clothes) in his garage and domestic violence. Ehlo — a father of three — was discovered being comforted or restrained by a son. There was a day in jail and a court order to stay away from his family.” [↩]