In honor of Duke/Keralina

I'm pretty excited about this.

N-B-A-spiracy: Lakers advance to NBA Finals

There wasn't really a conspiracy, of course, but you'd be lying if you said that Lakers didn't take a lot of help from the ref's to get to the finals this season.

Game 1) Near the end of a close game, the ball goes off of Duncan and out of bounds. Duncan appears to be fouled. No call is made. At the end of the game, score tied and the Lakers with the ball, Kobe blatantly shoulders a Spur out of his way, elevates, hits the go ahead jumper. No foul is called. The Lakers win.

Game 4) Spurs down 2 with 3 seconds to play. Derek Fisher mugs the Spurs Brent Barry. No foul is called. Barry loses the ball, and the game ends. The NBA admits the next day that a 2 shot foul should have been called. Barry is an 85% free throw shooter. But alas. Lakers win. Barry says of the NBA's apology:

"That's awesome. Because Doc Brown is waiting for me outside, and we're going to get in the DeLorean and fire up the flux capacitor and we're going to go back and shoot a couple of free throws."

And that pretty much wrapped up the series. At the same time...I'm happy that LA won, as to me they're a more fun team to watch than the Spurs. And there's no denying that Kobe is the single best end-0f-game player the NBA has had in the last 10 years. Even on those Shaq/Kobe teams, it wasn't like the Lakers would give it to the big guy down the stretch. They'd give it to Kobe.

So dubious refereeing aside, well done Lakers. Next up: the Celtics or the Pistons. How very 1988...

Talking bad about the NBA

It's a popular thing to do.

This Slate piece gives the NBA a hard time over the recent Dallas/Nets trade.

Quoth Slate: "[A trade in the NBA is] more like trying to solve a 20-variable equation on your graphing calculator."

Yes, because no one bothers with complex statistical analysis or salary cap math in any other major professional sports.

Sigh...NBA, why do they all hate you so?

Friday Morning NBA Notes

First things first, congrats to Wade and the rest of the Wake nation, and to Lauren and the rest of the UConn faithful--Wake Forest (Duncan and Paul) and UConn (Butler and Hamilton) feature 2 "alums" each on this year's NBA all-star team (Duncan being the only "alum" in the "graduated from the school" sense of the word.

In other news: JJ Redick contemplates trade, is told to sit quietly and wait his turn. Or, you know, stop sucking so much at "defense" and "being atheletic". Makes you wonder...do we have another Trajan Langdon situation on our hands here, or will JJ be able to find a productive niche in the league? Time will tell...but hey, at least there's poetry to fall back on, right JJ?

And finally, this is a bit outdated--but I never got around to giving Schindler crap about Mighty, Mighty Mike Dunleavey going off against the Warriors a few weeks back. Sure, the Pacers and Warriors split their home and home (the home team winning both games). And sure, the Pacers kinda really suck. But Dun-Dun played well in both games against the Warriors--21 pts, 4.5 ast, 9.5 rbs--and there was some small satisfaction in that.