lutherhouse:

the Lakers don't have the players the Pistons do. Pau Gasol is not as strong as either Kendrick Perkins or Kevin Garnett. Without Bynum, the Lakers are going to lose the physical matchup.

Ringomon:

It's a bit too easy to count foul shots and assume something fishy was going on. The Lakers do not have players who are driving to the basket right now. We saw this a few series back when the Celtics were playing the Hawks, except the Hawks were the ones getting all the free throws. Also, the Lakers also did not get a lot of free throws against the Spurs.

The Lakers had a lot of jumpers that they kept missing until the last few minutes. Right now they are a jump shooting team, and that's not going to win the NBA finals.

Oh, and yes, the non-call on that last travelling was pretty absurd.

wstander - up until the last 6 minutes, yes, the Lakers' offense was stifled. The Lakers had 61 points through 3 quarters.

Freddie: well, given the fact that the NBA was telling us for years that their refs were on the level calling games, and Tim Donaghy pled guilty to fixing games, I think that you are wrong to dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand. But yes, incompetence also is a viable theory.

General point: NBA refereeing has been awful for years. If any Lakers fans are complaining about not getting free throws, I think they should try to recruit help from Kings' fans.

And again, that last uncalled travelling was atrocious. Does the NBA realize just how bad their reputation for atrocious officiating has gotten? I get the feeling David Stern doesn't care in the least.

would the last layup be considered "points in the paint"? I think you have to do more than look at a shot chart to decide whether a shot was taken in a fouling situation.

The Lakers did not drive to the basket effectively when the Cs were in their set defense.

I know KG shot a lot of jumpers. He wasn't the one going to the line. At least, not on the jumpers. Pierce did, but that's because Greg Fisher is apparently easy to get airborne.

The problem with complaining that ticky-tack fouls are being called is that you are arguing on the side that fewer fouls should be called. You'll never win an argument with the league on the basis that "the refs should not be whistling fouls".

And if you argue any play in particular where a ticky-tack foul was not called, the league would just say (off the record), that it wasn't important.

I think the argument about who gets whistled for fouls is pretty much hopeless. I would hope for a bit more progress on the absurd amount of travelling that goes on.

Also, charges should be called a lot more than they are called. I think that "getting a defender airborne" should not be something that allows a shooter to get free throws simply by jumping into the defender.

MJ was known for pushing people hard, but I don't recall him doing that with Scottie Pippen. Also, he didn't do that to the team as a whole.

The media is continuing to try to push the Kobe-as-Jordan's-successor bit. It should be abandoned. Jordan was so good that, in 1986, when he was only 23, Larry Bird referred to him as "God". Kobe's almost 30 and he's way behind on the "clearly being the best player in the NBA" metric. I don't see a huge gap between him and LeBron. LeBron was at least able to drive to the basket against the Celtics.

Bryant will also never be as popular as Jordan. Being arrested on rape charges will do that. And paying off the accuser does not really serve as exoneration.

The Lakers got a ton of free throws in Game 3 because they were doing something they didn't do in Game 2 at all: attack the basket. The Celtics got fewer free throws because they settled for jump shots far more often.

But, as for this comment

And if you're going to conjure up an accusation that the NBA fixed games, wouldn't you choose the game everybody remembers for the losing team getting worked?

If you're going to conjure up an accusation that a conspiracy was behind a political assassination, wouldn't you choose to start with JFK?

The officiating in that Lakers-Kings game was so horrendously bad that people had to wonder how any refs could be so incompetent. And when it comes to light that at least one official was on the take, it is logical to think that there may have been more.

NBA officiating is atrocious. But what's worse is that David Stern maintains the fiction that there is no problem. When bad officiating is rampant, it becomes much easier for corruption to insert itself. What's really troublesome about Stern's denials is that it is exactly the same tune he sang before the Donaghy affair came to light.

People who say "if the league were crooked, San Antonio would never have won" make as much sense as people who say "if Al Capone were a gangster, every bank would have been robbed".

Being a criminal doesn't make a person omnipotent. Given that we already know that officiating was fixing games (see Donaghy), the question is no longer whether this was going on, but how much it was going on.

And yeah, Stern's denial was classic. He didn't even bother saying that the fix hadn't been in, he just said nobody would believe Donaghy.

Since Jordan's retirement, it has become increasingly clear that David Stern doesn't care about the quality of play in the NBA.