OldEaglePub {l Wrote}:twballgame9 {l Wrote}:I don't believe the outcome is fixed. The watchability of the game is fixed, without question, and it has an impact on who wins. Without the refs "managing the game" last night, the Celtics are up 20 at the half, everyone turns off the TV, and it is never close. Same could be said in the third quarter in the opposite direction, when the refs clearly eliminated laker momentum before the game got out of hand for the Lakers.
If that is the case, the league's plot is very sinister. For refs to put Kobe in foul trouble as we are killing the Lakers (in Q2), and for them to still have in mind a plan to make the game close by the end of Q2, that's saying something.
Since I have already spent over $2,000 in playoff tickets this year (2 games against Miami and Cleveland and 3 against Orlando), this scenario wouldn't make me feel too good. So, I prefer to play it down knowing fully well that much more sinister plots have happened, fuelled by the commercial interest of certain parties.
For every one call against Kobe in the second quarter, when Allen threatened to singlehandedly end the game, there were 5 calls on Celtic big men. Half of the "blocks" by Laker bigs in the first half were fouls. Then, in the third quarter, it shifted the opposite way as the Lakers threatened to pull out down the stretch. Rondo's reach in on Fisher should have been a foul, for example. That was when Kobe really got into foul trouble (and most of the calls on Kobe were actually good calls).
And there was one more swing back. Once Kobe got foul 5, he could have murdered someone and not been called for a foul. The funniest joke was Jackson trying to justify the no-call when he mugged Allen on the 2-on-1 with Rondo late. The NBA knows that a 6th on Kobe means Game Over. Because without Kober, the Lakers are the Nets.
