We heard so much about how loud the EnergySolutions Arena in Salt Lake City could get. We heard about the tin roof, the plastic chairs and how the small surroundings reverberated the screams and cheers of its dwellers to make it one of the loudest arenas in the NBA. But what we learned Friday was that those things also help to make the boos a lot more punctuated as well.

I’ll save my opinions on the Utah fans who booed Derek Fisher when he returned there in the regular season. This is just too easy of a topic to go off on and if you find yourself putting a hate on for a classy and respected player like Fish, I’m not sure I have anything I can say that will make much sense to you anyway. You clearly live by different rules.

And I won’t go off on the Utah fans who felt the need to throw garbage towards the Lakers bench during timeouts of the fourth quarter on Friday. Again, you and I don’t have a lot in common. I passed Grade 3.

Oh but Utah couldn’t get enough of booing every single call that went against its team in Game 6, to the point the Jazz faithful broke into regular chants of “Ref You Suck.” And this wasn’t an isolated group, either. This was loud and clear enough to distinctly hear each word. And I won’t make the gimme Utah-related joke of “well it’s easy for the fans to be loud: It’s not just a fan cheering, he gets his multiple wives to join him.”

I won’t make that joke. It’s above me.

The booing of the refs. The last bastion of a fanbase whose team isn’t doing anything right and they have nowhere else to turn with their angst. But EVERY call? That’s Utah for ya. They’ve made an art out of being mind-blowingly dim.

For the record? NBA refereeing is the most inconsistent and frustrating sports entity to observe. I’ve put these guys ahead of CFL refs in the category of “this might make me put a ban saw to my frontal lobe.” CFL refs are incompetent. NBA refs are, by all accounts quite competent, but seemingly swayed and altered so easily by the player involved in a call or by the game situation that you know — I mean, you KNOW — they play things differently.

Did Utah have a right to be a bit peeved with the calls Friday night? In some instances. I thought the block call on Paul Milsap on a driving Kobe Bryant in the fourth quarter was suspect and I had no doubt in my mind that it would have been a charge if it had occurred in the second quarter.

But, for the record, the personal foul calls ended up 24 against Los Angeles and 26 against Utah. The foul shots attempted favoured L.A. 38-25 with it also taken into consideration that the Jazz were intentionally fouling late in the game, as well as shooting threes to get back in the game (i.e. not attacking), while L.A. was aggressive and going to the rim. You know, where fouls get called?

When it comes to the NBA, I’ve learned to not bother screaming when a call gets made. I hate bad refereeing, but I hate inconsistency more. And that’s what you get with the NBA. But because there is no rhyme or reason to what they are calling, it serves no purpose to scream and yell and holler when your team gets jobbed because — know what? — you’ll get it paid back to you sooner rather than later.

But the refs didn’t have the Jazz shooting 35 per cent for most of the game. The refs didn’t put them behind by 19 in the first half and they didn’t put them down 26-12 nine minutes into the game. Direct your ire somewhere else. Such as Carlos Boozer who, technically, still wears a Utah jersey but you’d be hard-pressed to figure that out, what with how much is awful play assisted the Lakers in this series.

So moving on to the West final: I had someone ask me who I, as a Laker fan, was pulling for in the New Orleans-San Antonio series. Ironically I had begun blogging after Game 2 of that series about such things as, to paraphrase, “remember when we respected the San Antonio Spurs?”

Well that’s changed, hasn’t it? So much so that my answer to the above “who ya pulling for” question is undoubtedly New Orleans. For as old and slow and up and down the Spurs have been against New Orleans, there isn’t a thought in my head that San Antonio would be an easy final opponent for the Lakers. San Antonio is a tough place to win and, say what you will about those grizzled old dudes, they are still the champions and they still turn it on when they absolutely need to (even if what they’re turning on now has gotten decidedly more low-flow).

The match-up for Los Angeles with New Orleans would seem to be a better one as well. The length and size of the Lakers would be a tough match-up for New Orleans, even with Tyson Chandler and a healthy David West, but the Lakers wouldn’t be sad to see one of NO’s top guys under the weather when the final rolls around.

So we have two Game 7s and only one will be close. Despite how San Antonio has played in New Orleans (beyond dreadful), the Spurs will make it worth watching this time around. The Boston Celtics, meanwhile, will do Cleveland like they did Atlanta.

Final predictions:
Boston 93, Cleveland 78
San Antonio 97, New Orleans 94