NBA Playoffs 2012 Running thread

JC:

Not saying marginal players are "great" because they played on multiple championship teams. I'm saying players who are considered The Best of an era, players who win scoring titles, MVPs, all that subjective popularity contest stuff, become great when they win titles.

 

A basketball game called strictly by the rules would either end with every player fouling out on either roster fouling out in the first half, or an endless layup line as nobody attempted to play any defense whatsoever.

 

Yeah, because LeBron is a douche and Durant is a good guy.

 

Agree if this started in Game 3.

Disagree that if the NBA wasn't one step above pro wrestling in its entertainment scriptage, it would have the stones to tell it's refs to call traveling, clutching, illegal screens, flops, etc. The players and the coaches would adjust ... 2 or 3 months after they stopped whining and crying.

 

I can't speak for LLT, but I never said Barkley, Malone and Stockton were greater than the guys you listed as great. You're free to define "great" as you see fit, of course. In my opinion, though, your definition is too stingy. I prefer my definition, which would include the guy who scored the second-most points in NBA history. And the guy who had the most assists and most steals in NBA history. And Elgin flippin' Baylor. Under my definition, Oscar was great when he was averaging a triple-double for a season; under yours, Oscar only became great near the end of his career, when he got to play with Kareem and won a title.

 

After watching the play again several times over, it should've been a foul. But because of who was involved in the play, it wasn't. And that's just my opinion on it.

 

I don't know about the past 30 years. Seems like the NBA was doing pretty damn well in the late 80s and most of the 90s.

And maybe star calls are more visible in the NBA, but you can't tell me they don't happen in every pro sports league. Maybe the corners of the plate just got bigger when Greg Maddux pitched. Or maybe all those DBs just fell a Michael Irvin's cleats, in awe.

Steve Javie made an interesting point on SportsCenter. He said there should have been a foul called, but it wasn't that the ref saw it and didn't blow the whistle. He said the ref was out of position.

It was a foul, but from the wrong angle it could look like incidental contact, especially 1) in the final minute, where a questionable foul shouldn't have a hand in the outcome, and 2) when Durant didn't make the most assertive move and still got off a pretty clean shot.

 

Thing that is standing out to me is the way that Lebron's outside shot has completely deserted him in the last three games. After hitting everything in Game 6 against the Celtics, I believe he made one outside shot in Game 7, and none at all in the first two games of the Finals (unless you count his key late pull-up bank as an outside shot).

On the one hand, its to his credit that he has recognized early that the shot isn't falling and gone inside and still been an offensive force and scored 30-plus in each of those three games. But on the other hand, wtf?

 

Stars have been getting the calls in the NBA since long before James was born. However, in this case, both players are stars, two of the three biggest in the league, in fact. So I think we can chalk this mistaken non-call up to the value-free human error that is also an established part of NBA officiating.

 

That still shot looks much, much worse than what actually happened. So much so that I wonder if that's been photoshopped. Lebron's hand looks to be in a pretty awkward spot in relation to the rest of his arm.

Having said that, no doubt it was a foul. A ticky-tack foul, but one nonetheless. It just wasn't the mugging the anti-Lebron crowd is portraying it.