Thunder opening up a lead with 3 minutes to go. Could be all over for San Antonio…
What was that, a blown 20 point lead? How depressing.
What’s the line on Thunder vs Celtics?
I suffer from premature prognostication.
I did the same thing.
But in the end, I’m glad to see someone besides the Lakers and Spurs come out of the west. I just couldn’t get behind that Dallas team last year.
The Thunder have definitely made a fan out of me. I don’t like the Heat and I have no love for the Celtics either, so I guess I know who I’m pulling for in the Finals.
How can you not like Durant?
Damn, if Durant wins the championship by going through Kobe, Duncan, and KG, it will definitely seem as if a torch had been passed.
Just an FYI, in local news coverage of the lines to get in to Chesapeake Arena, I saw plenty of black people. The state may be white, but the O-K-C is mixed. Just like any number of larger cities throughout the US. I didn’t see a whole lot of Kiowa, tho …
Durant is a package player. Big, fast, shoots outside and in, decent D.
The biggest item here, after tees and hats, is fake Harden beards.
Durant I like. Westbrook on the other hand is a cocky prick.
I think it’s a bit premature to count out the Heat, too. They are far more talented than Boston whether Bosh is on the floor or not. The problem is that LeBron is living up to his reputation as a choke artist in late minutes of close games. I’ll be rooting for Boston, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see DWade turn it up to 11 and carry the Heat to the finals.
He’s just keeping it old school: teamed up with Russell, KC Jones and Havlicek were pretty damned unstoppable, so if you’re a Celtics fan (as I’m assuming the mayor of Boston needs to proclaim himself to be) you should love KJ and Hondo too.
Unfortunately, with the way this year has gone, I can’t avoid paying attention to the referees in games. And I don’t know whether it was common everyday NBA front-running, superstar-coddling, home-crowd-pandering plus random arbitrary officiating, or whether Stern called down to the referees locker room at halftime and made some comments about the market for Duncan jerseys being saturated and several warehouses full of Westbrook and Durant jerseys that needed to be sold, but there seemed to be a lot of bad calls against the Spurs in the second half. Duncan’s offensive foul was a joke, even if you didn’t notice how often the Thunder’s screens were moving, Ginobli’s pass-before-contacting-the-defender foul is universally not called in the NBA, Jackson’s technical was, um, let’s just say even the NBA-paid announcers were in disbelief, charges/blocks were interpreted rather differently at each end, as was the answer to ‘do we call a foul if the ball comes flying out and we can’t see if it was a clean block or not?’.
I mean, kudos to the Thunder for working hard to come back, but it would have been nice to see if they could do it without help.
I didn’t watch the end of the game, so I couldn’t comment on the officiating at that time, but the general perception of NBA fans to this point seemed to be that the Western Conf. officials were calling pretty good games, not calling ticky-tack fouls and stuff. The Eastern Conf. officials on the other hand…yuk.
I thought that the Spurs got the calls in the first half with their all too prolific flopping abilities and the Thunder got the calls in the second half. In my mind, it evens out.
This. Also, I think the Spurs got the edge with foul calling in the first game.
I don’t think there’s any ref conspiracy, just some mistakes or even merely differences of opinions.
He’s actually referring to KG and Rondo. Shoulda added more context.
The crew last night was the same one that completely blew in Game 2 of the ECF, and the Internet Consensus, as it were, is that they were pretty terrible last night too. YMMV.
It sure did appear to me that every single call went against the Spurs in the 4th quarter. That’s where I think Popovich does a disservice to his team. It’s important to stay classy, but he should have been screaming at the refs after some of the early calls, just to generate favorable calls later. He already has three choirboy superstars (if we exclude Parker’s personal life), who never seem to complain about anything. It’s Pop’s job to stick up for them and he failed.
I did not know that. I thought the ECF and WCF had their own respective crews, which would kind of make sense. Thanks for the info.
I think Boston screwed up their best chance to win the series. I don’t see them winning in Miami.