That fat, sweaty creep is suddenly this close to an NBA championship.
Well that sucks. I guess LeBron just doesn’t have the team around him yet. Hopefully the Cavs can rebound back at home. If the Magic get to the finals, they’ll get killed by either the Lakers or the Nuggets.
He looks like Ron Jeremys twin, thats the problem.
If he gets there, he’ll get swept. I don’t think he’ll even get there, though. Orlando isn’t going to keep getting all those friendly calls back in Cleveland.
You’re nuts. At this point it looks as though the winner of the Lakers/Nuggets series will be by default.
Anyway, if you think Orlando has gotten the better of the refereeing in this series, you may wish to invest in new glasses.
By friendly calls you mean the refs are going to go back to throwing the game in clevelands favor right? The magic are winning because they are playing 5 on 4, their team vs lebron and 3 refs.
Unbelievable. Two straight sweeps to being down 3-1. King James better work some Magic. 
I don’t think it matters what he does. His courtiers have finally been revealed as jesters and knaves.
Ah, Cleveland. They’re really reminding me of the Colts until 2007 right now- untested all season and suddenly depantsed in the conference championship.
Went back to page 1 of the thread just now because I forgot what I predicted would happen after the Magic knocked off the Cavs.
Oops.
You guys do remember we swept the lakers during the season right? might wanna ask the cavs how little regular season dominance matters right about now. Also this just makes me smile.
Next game, LeBron starts seeing the matrix.
And begins to fly.
Well he is the chosen one.
I might’ve enjoyed this game if I’d watched it. Instead I saw a game where LeBron got to shoot two free throws on little or no contact with 0.5 left, and then there was a no-call when Varejao pushed and twisted Howard out of bounds at the end.
Anyway, the Magic have stunned me. I was rooting for them but I didn’t think they had a chance to stop Cleveland. LeBron has to be really disappointed with his supporting cast here because most of them have just sucked wind for the entire series.
I wasn’t too upset about the Howard/Varejao no-call because Howard didn’t have the ball. “Star calls” tend to happen when a guy has the ball and is going to the basket, which Howard wasn’t.
To me, it looked like the refs forced the game into OT by refusing to “decide the game” by calling a foul, even if one was warranted.
They didn’t seem to have a problem with deciding the game by calling a foul on LeBron’s right foot, which apparently plays for the Magic.
If you’re not with LeBron, you’re against him. That was some ridiculous crap at the end of the game, anyway: LeBron stumbles without being touched and shoots two free throws, Varejao undercuts Howard and tries a wrestling move and it’s a no call.
Howard dragged Varejao out of bounds. You guys need glasses. Varejoa was getting mugged the whole game without any calls. Howard was getting the star treatment last night.
So prior to the last week or so, I haven’t watched an NBA game in almost three years. My interest in the sport had already started to wane by the time the championship series was played that year, but watching the referees calmly hand an undeserved title to Dywane Wade, with no recourse for the team that was clearly the better team, made me give up on the sport. I watch to see who’s better, not to see who gets the more favorable calls. Watching that series made me feel like I was wasting my time, like I was watching professional wrestling but with the athletes not in on the joke.
I stopped watching altogether after that year. I’ve followed the NBA distantly since then, mostly by reading Bill Simmons, but something about this year motivated me to tune in for Magic-Cavs. I was vaguely aware that LeBron James has morphed from great to awesome, and I had no particular rooting interest in either team (I never rooted hard for any team in basketball the way I do in baseball and football, but to the extent that I had favorite teams they were the Jazz and the Raptors), so I figured I’d be unlikely to get really pissed off, so I tuned in.
I say all this to emphasize that as a viewer, I come in with no particular bias. And I say: Digoenes, you’re out of your mind. The Cavs have been dramatically favored by the refs throughout this series. I watched Dwight Howard execute a picture perfect block from behind on a LeBron James jumpshot in which Howard literally never touched anything at all but the ball, and get called for his fifth foul. I watched the refs issue ludicrous technicals on Howard for breathing funny (anyone want to bet he’ll get called for one more sometime during Game Five, leaving him suspended for Game Six in Orlando)? I watched Varejao pull Dwight Howard out of bounds and get a no-call, and then watched LeBron shoot two absolutely phantom free throws for the tie.
Dio, you’re clearly rooting for the Cavs and LeBron; you might want to consider the possibility that your view of what’s going down is biased. From my standpoint, the refereeing has clearly favored the Cavaliers, and I’ll go so far as to say that with equitable officiating, the Magic would be dominating this series.
MHO: (Didn’t see the whole game, but replayed the end of regulation).
The Howard/Varejao no-call was close but justifiable, probably even I think correct (though I’m a little more biased towards allowing people to play defense than the typical NBA practice). Varejao and Howard were both moving toward the same spot and there was some contact, but as nobody had the ball, it seemed an acceptable level of contact to me, like a good box-out. And after the initial contact, Varejao just kept his inside position. Arms got tangled, but can’t clearly blame one player or the other and nobody ended up particularly benefiting from it, so no-call on that is good.
The LeBron drive foul call, though, is a little harder to justify. (Do the NBA rules specifically have a category of “Endorsement Fouls”?).
Looks like three-point shooting is going to be the desired skill this off-season.
They are 