I’d be very worried if i was the cavs, Orlando has only played the second half on each game and they could easily be up 2-0 right now.
It looked like they were playing to stop him from breaking to the basket for the lob, and that did turn out to be the play that was called. Turkoglu successfully cut off Bron’s path to the basket, so he cleared back out to point, and he got the clean pass, but he got it going away from the basket. As percentages go, forcing the pass to go to a shooter running away from the basket beyond the key with 1 second left on the clock is fairly safe defense. It’s not the best possible defense, but it’s not completely unsound.
Of course, the exception is when the shooter is an exceptional player. Van Gundy said after the game he thinks he called the wrong defense, and implie that if he had it to do again, he’d just play to deny Bron the ball, period, not just force him to break away from the basket. I think if that kind of situation comes up again, we’ll see defenses doubling or tripling LeBron, no matter where he is in the court, and just forcing someone else to beat them. That’s going to leave someone with a wide open look, though, and Moe Williams can shoot too.
I thought the defense was pretty good, especially if you’re concerned the refs want to see the Cavs win and would take any excuse to foul (I don’t think that’s actually the case - they actually called travelling on Lebron with like 2 minutes left… how often does that happen?) but I’ve seen people complain about how the refs are rigging the game in favor of the Cavs.
All they had to do was foul him on his ass. 2 shot foul ,not enough to win. But don’t let him shoot. That was stupid.
Put Lebron on the line with 1 second left and only up by 2? i’m sorry but thats retarded.
He was behind the 3 point line when he got the ball. If they’d fouled him, it would have been a 3 shot penalty.
…if he was shooting. Oherwise, just two.
That said, it’s still stupid. You foul him, he makes two, you go to overtime on the road. If Orlando was up three, it’s the smart move. Up two, you get yourself fired. Much lower odds anyone makes a shot with one second left (especially a ridiculous three) than two freebies.
Yes, I agree, if you know LeBron is going to hit a low probability shot for sure, you can use your knowledge of the future to reformulate your planning.
Results-oriented BS. If LeBron misses the shot like he will 80% of the time, there’d be no criticism of the decision … even though it was the same decision.
The fouls that they’ve been calling on Howard the whole series are just fucking ridiculous.
He got the ball inside and moved past the line.
I saw a replay yesterday that looked like he got it over the line. I could be wrong . Labron is not a real good foul shooter. If it were a 2 shot foul ,it might have worked out. Three chances would not have been good.
As a Cleveland fan, I’ve never known what it was like to have the refs stacking things in your favor.
It feels… weird.
Yeah I’d be worried if i had the refs totally in my camp and still managed to lose by double digits. They really need to at least pretend to have some semblance of impartiality, the NBAs rep can’t take any more rumors of refs affecting outcomes. It would also be nice if there weren’t at least 3-4 completely different companies running Lebron vs Kobe ads during every game. The puppets are funny as fuck though.
Rob Peterson’s got up his 5 keys to tonight’s game. Should be an awesome one…
I hope so, so far the games have been very frustrating to watch.
Could the NBA and the refs be any more blatant in wanting Cleveland to make the NBA finals? Seriously? Tonight is just further proof. It’s really turning into a joke.
It was actually Orlando that got the homecooking on that last play. Howard was totally yanking on Varejao’s arm.
Bull. That was nothing. A moving screen to knock him out of bounds was indeed a foul IMO.
Orlando up in OT though. I’m seeing a lot of, “Are the games fixed?” articles online. I know Stern is praying for Kobe vs Lebron. But, you can’t looked like your league is rigged. I’m sure baseball didn’t want the Rays and the NFL didn’t want the Cardinals.
What a fat, sweaty creep Van Gundy is. He looks like one of the predators on that Dateline show.