It is almost comical that the NBA has, for once, come out and admitted an err in judgment.

On a critical play in Game 4 of the Western Conference final, Derek Fisher was sent in the air by a Brent Barry pump-fake, causing the Los Angeles Lakers point guard to bump against the left shoulder of the San Antonio Spurs shooter, who stayed on the ground and then, a second later, flung an ill-fated shot towards the hoop as the last seconds ticked off the clock and L.A. bolted out with a 3-1 series lead.

The debate over Fisher’s foul is a joke when you consider the widespread inconsistency that permeates this league and every single game in these playoffs.

James Posey can literally two-hand LeBron James as he drives across the key, with no intent on playing the ball, but Ronny Turiaf is ejected for a hard-foul that wasn’t remotely near some of the hits in these playoffs that would have made NHL players take notice.

This isn’t about one team over the other. It’s about the NBA’s laughable policing of its playoff games. One play you’re calling a defender for a hand check, and the other minute you’re letting a body contact go because it happened in the final five minutes of a game when all the players are scrapping and clawing.

Here’s the reality: If Derek Fisher is lifted in the air and bumps Brent Barry in the first quarter of that game, it’s a foul. But, like it or not, because it was in the final few seconds of a critical game, it was what it was: A final whistle.

The injustice here is not towards the San Antonio Spurs — although they have beef — but rather to the NBA fan in general. I’ve been watching this league for the better part of 20 years and I still found myself watching the highlight a few times questioning whether it was a foul or not.

And do you know why I debated? It had nothing to do with the play itself and everything to do with how the NBA has discredited itself with inconsistency. A hand check in the first quarter is an infraction, but a body foul in traffic is disregarded. The charge/block call — the most debated and challenged foul call in basketball — is rewarded to whomever sells it the best. As long as it’s in the right part of the game for your team.

But here was the NBA a day after Game 4 coming out and saying it — and the officials in charge — was wrong in the call, much like the NFL has been known to do the Monday following a controversial call. Where it becomes a circus, however, is this is the rare time the NBA has made the leap to say someone in its organization was wrong in an on-court decision. But in a sport where there’s potentially a call every 30 seconds, it’s silly to find one call up for debate and put it on display on the same networks that would rather focus on replays of the innocuous 17-foot jump shot than the controversial foul that happened seconds before.

So the NBA decided to make that call its concession. An acceptance that not everything goes the way that its planned. And as such, the Spurs would have been well advised to have someone like Bryant taking the shot for them.

Knowing the NBA, they’d have been more likely to get that call.

An interview with New York Rangers assistant coach Mike Pelino; plus, thoughts on the NBA playoffs, Dwyane Wade and Star Jones, Bill O’Reilly, Beverly Hills 90210, and Rita MacNeil.

 

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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

A few rambling thoughts after putting the Brandon Sun to bed here at roughly 1:49 a.m. Central Daylight Time, the extended hours the product of an NHL playoff game that just wouldn’t stop. The NHL playoffs are the bane of existence for Canadian newspapers, as entertaining as they can be. Dallas’ 4OT win over San Jose on a Sunday that stretched into Monday was a shining example.

But with the waiting game complete (until the next marathon), we can turn attention away from the ice to set our sights on the conference semifinals in the Association and, most interestingly perhaps, the Boston Celtics.

We’re not ready to prefix the Cs with the word “mighty” just yet, although their punking of the Atlanta Hawks in a season-on-the-line contest on Sunday was worthy of an adjective of some sort. But, as it stands now with Boston advancing to play Cleveland in the Eastern semi, the adjective has to be “inconsistent”, or some derivative thereof.

If we’re talking about just the first round — and we realize that one round does not a post-season make — the Celtics are easily, far and away — like different planets in different solar systems — the most perplexing team in the NBA. As the teams returned to Boston to play that Game 7 on Sunday, there could not have been many people outside of the Peach State that truly, seriously believed the Atlanta Hawks had a hope in heaven’s name of winning that game. Sure, you can toss out any cliches you want about how anything can happen in a one-game series, but that simply isn’t going to fly here. The Hawks had no chance. They were 12-29 on the road in the regular season, the visiting team had not won a game in this series and — c’mon — was the best team in the NBA seriously going to lose a series-ending game in their own gym especially when those recently-long-deprived lunatic fans were behind them? (Lunatic said as a term of endearment here). The Hawks put any doubt to rest early on hitting just six field goals in the first quarter and finishing an embarrassing 29 per cent from the field for the day.

No instead a bigger question than “who’s going to win Game 7?” was … “why in the hell are we watching a Game 7?” If we played this series 10 more times, how many times does it even get to five games? Once? Twice?

Yet here were the NBA’s regular season juggernauts going to the max against a team that couldn’t even get its record to the magical .500 mark in the watered-down East. Kevin Garnett — specifically in Game 6 when his team had a chance to sew things up the first time — was again shirking the responsibility of taking over a game he had every business dominating and deferring to his teammates in crunchtime. Garnett’s a beast, OK? But his “pump, pump, pass” routine in fourth quarters is fairly unbecoming of one of the great power forwards still in search of a legacy.

When the Celtics play — truly play — they’re scary and they flexed a lot of that Sunday. Say what you want, but that was still an NBA team (barely) that they held to 68 points and a junior high-like 43 through three quarters.
One moment that stood out in a game that was pretty much devoid of anything memorable (save for Marvin Williams’ mid-air tackle of Rajon Rondo), was Garnett’s hard pick on Zaza Pachulia in the fourth quarter. Pachulia famously stood up to Garnett in a Game 4 scuffle that was one of a few moments this series where the Hawks refused to play the role of punching bag. (And while we’re here: How Garnett escaped unscathed by both the media and NBA disciplinary committee after shoving referee Eddie F. Rush is laughable). But Garnett got his final shot in on Pachulia when he blindsided the Georgian (from the other Georgia) with a shoulder to the grill in a play that had nothing to do with setting a screen. But Pachulia, who had earned the respect of all the little guys around the world by previously not taking the crap of the imposing Garnett, cowered away this time around like Cliff Clavin in that Cheers’ episode when the other postal worker wanted to whup him. Not that The Scrum is in the business of promoting fisticuffs or condoning pro athletes snap and go the way of Kermit Washington and start swinging on opposition, but Pachulia got his back up momentarily and then slinked away.

Perhaps it was pointless at that juncture, but his body language represented the rest of the team.

And this was who the Celtics toyed with for three out of seven games?

Ironically the Celtics are likely on a crash course with another team that seems to turn it off and on when it feels like it, should they knock off Cleveland and then have the oft-uninterested Detroit Pistons get past the over-matched Orlando Magic in the other semifinal.

There’s again no logical reason (other than the one named LeBron) why Boston should fall short of playing for the Eastern berth into the NBA championship.

But who can tell? They’ve defied logic a few times already.

A very special interview with Michael Schur (writer/producer/actor on The Office and co-founder of FireJoeMorgan.com). Michael joins Swatter and Larks to talk about the state of sports journalism, Costas Now, the Boston Red Sox, Roger Clemens, a day in the life of The Office, the appeal of Dwight Schrute, and much more.

 

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Hello all.

Writer/producer/actor Michael Schur of The Office will be our guest on this week’s podcast. He’s a two-time Emmy award winner. He has appeared in three episodes of The Office as Dwight’s cousin Mose Schrute. But more importantly, he writes for the critically acclaimed website FireJoeMorgan.com under the name Ken Tremendous (which is the real reason we’re having on the podcast — to talk about baseball and basketball and blogging).

The podcast will be online Thursday at 8:30. It will be awesome.

That is all.

(NOTE: You can see plenty of Mike — the bearded guy — in the opening 4:50 of this clip.)

I, Larkins, am still on record as saying the Raptors will lose in five to the Magic. However, the Philadelphia 76ers destroyed, or rather I should say the Detroit Pistons, destroyed my bold proclamation that the Sixers were out in five after “catching lightning in a bottle” with a Game 1 vic.

 The Sixers, despite a crowd that bordered on catatonic, used their home-court advantage and took a 2-1 lead in a series few people expected to be remotely compelling. And even with the underdog up, I don’t think you can sugget it IS compelling. But we like the underdog at The Scrum, so the fact that the Sixers are somehow holding the upper hand on the indifferent Pistons, has us right riled up.

But, one thing, people: Did no one in sports-crazy Philadelphia get the memo? Are they so beaten down by three decades without a champion that they just have given up on their pro basketball team? Were the Flyers or Phantoms practising somewhere? There is no explanation for the empty seats at Wachovia Center other than this franchise has done everything in its power to alienate what is a loyal, almost maniacal, fan base.

 Which brings us to Toronto, a city that welcomed back with home arms and mucho amore its team that was so unabashedly bad in its two games on the road. The Raptor fans were reminiscent of those movies of small-town basketball when the entire populace converges on the local diner to welcome back the high school team that just lost in State. They were raucous, among the loudest home fans these playoffs, and they helped will their Raps to a critical Game 3 win that once again gave hope that Toronto could win this series if it can hold court.

But, you might say, they still have to WIN A GALL DANG GAME ON THE ROAD!!!!

The Game 3 Theory applied itself in Dallas and Toronto where the home team returns after two losses on the road — buoyed by being back in the friendly confines — and rallies for a potentially-series-altering win in the most critical of games. Only, more often than not, those games don’t end up being series-altering.

They just end up being series-prolonging.

In the end, we still believe the strong survive.

An interview with Simon Fraser Clan guard Jordan Nostedt; a look at the opening week of the NBA playoffs; plus an episode of Blindside featuring thoughts on sports riots, Juno, and Rafael Belliard.

 

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Continuing our “coverage” of the NBA post-season, a couple of thoughts on the Toronto-Orlando series that is officially into panic mode for the Raptors.

Sure you’re only down 2-0, a less-than-enviable position, but not one that necessarily requires hysteria in areas around the Gardiner Expressway. At the same time, the Raptors have only shown a sign of life at brief moments during the series and I’m losing faith in Sam Mitchell as a coach. I know, it’s shocking.

First off, Toronto had a chance to roll over and play dead after another atrocious first quarter but they’re full marks for responding in the second, closing to within two at the half and then not letting Orlando pull away in the third when the lead hovered around seven to nine points. They battled back, knocked down some big shots and eventually gave themselves a chance to win.

So close your eyes Raptors fans, what I’m about to say won’t go over well.

Chris Bosh ain’t clutch.

Now, this is not a derogatory comment on his importance to that team. It’s quite clear that he’s the most valuable player on that team and his 29-10-6 line was a solid playoff stat. But Bosh was given the reins on the Raptors final two trips and came up empty both times, the first go-round a wing-to-lane drive against Dwight Howard that ended with Bosh absorbing a bit of contact and then losing control of the ball in mid-air. The final trip, after a time out, with nine seconds left, ended with Bosh settling for a 19-foot jump shot over Howard that ended the game when it biffed and fell into Orlando’s possession.

Jose Calderon had scored eight of the Raptors’ final 15 points and Carlos Delfino had six of the final 15, yet it was Bosh who the Raptors drew things up for in that final time out. So they ran the screen and roll, which created nothing, and then Bosh settled for a shot on the most important possession of the team’s season.

The results were predictable.

Bosh didn’t look like a player who wanted the ball in his hands in those final two minutes or so, but he’s not the one to blame for that final possession. All he did was miss a shot he probably shouldn’t have been lined up to take anyway.

How on earth the Raptors go into a time out — you know, the place where you plan your plays? — and come out with a play I wouldn’t even recommend you run during a video game is beyond me. Yet Mitchell did it.

Maybe it was a breakdown somewhere, but how the Raptors bungled that possession is unacceptable. Nine seconds is a world of time and they not only wasted that but also a great opportunity for a road split.

A few rambling thoughts while taking stock of the first weekend of NBA playoffs.

• The NBA “Where (fill in blank) happens” series of ads has served more as comedy fodder for fans than it has resonated as a clever campaign. That said, clearly, the best commercial in the series has been Mikki Moore’s spot.

(Hey… while we’re honouring Nebraska alumni not in the NBA playoffs, a special shout out to Tyronn Lue, Erick Strickland and Eric Piatkowski, the latter of whom is officially in the playoffs with the Phoenix Suns but playing about as significant a role in helping his team winning a title as Swatter right about now. Also, a special The Scrum shout to Fox West Los Angeles Lakers colour man Stu Lantz, a former Husker.)

• A trend I’m a bit tired of in the NBA playoffs is the “Host City Handing Out Same-Coloured T-Shirts In Attempt To Create Atmosphere.” Golden State last year, Cleveland, Houston and — most embarrassingly — New Orleans, this year. The Hornets couldn’t even fill their seats (umm, playoffs?) and then the aquamarine blue t-shirts were speckled throughout the crowd. Listen, if you can’t just create the hype by telling your fans to all wear red, or white or whatever, then cram the idea. It’s not impressive if everyone wears a shirt you handed out to them when they entered the building.

• We have our first shocker of the first games with Philadelphia beating No. 2 Detroit in the east. The Pistons led by as many as 15 but the Sixers chipped away, took the lead and then got buck-naked lucky as Detroit blew two glorious chances to take the lead in the final minute. Tayshaun Prince missed a 14-foot jumper (should’ve pump-faked and taken a step to create space) and 6-foot-11 Rasheed Wallace missed a gimme lay-up after that. Additionally, Chauncey Billups, a 91.8 per cent FT shooter this season, missed three free ones in the fourth quarter.

Perhaps the reason why the Pistons are somewhat under the radar in discussions about who will come out of the East is because they have a tendency to go away. When they’re on, they’re as tough as anyone in the NBA. But they don’t always seem to be all that concerned with being on. That said, look at what had to happen for Philadelphia to win that game. From the blown lead, to the two missed chances to Chauncey missing free throws to the Detroit crowd performing like they were in the observation deck at a frontal lobotomy, it all feels like lightning in a bottle to me. Detroit wins the next four.

• The only less intriguing first-round match-up is Boston and Atlanta, a series that feels like it shouldn’t even happen. If Atlanta gets within double digits on the final scoresheet of any of these four game (no way this doesn’t end up a sweep), then the Hawks should consider that a moral victory and build to next year. And anything less than a series win might not be enough to keep Mike Woodson from losing his job as head coach. Gotta love professional sports.

• The series giving BOS-ATL a run for its — uhhhh, forget it, money seems like too strong a word for something so devoid of any value — is Utah and Houston. In a battle of Western No. 4 vs. No. 5, the Jazz made it clear that the series of the two most closely-seeded teams is by no means that close come gametime. Utah dominated Game 1 and Houston is back to looking like the team that would never have been a playoff squad if not for their ridiculous mid-season 22-game win streak that made them relevant for about the span of, oh, 22 games.

(Side note: Another one of those Mac vs PC commercials just came on TV. Let’s begin a pool in the comment section as to when those commercials will actually end. Also, not even the Mac vs PC battle is as one-sided as the Boston-Atlanta series. If Boston were Mac, Atlanta is a Commodore Vic20.)

• Which team in the NBA’s Western Conference is worse at defending? Phoenix or Denver? Well, the stats say Denver but Phoenix was exposed in its loss at San Antonio on Saturday, too.

Los Angeles’ Pau Gasol scored 36 points and added another 16 rebounds for the Lakers in a 128-114 win on Sunday. More alarming about that 128 is the fact that Kobe Bryant had but four points at halftime. More alarming about that 36 of Gasol’s is the fact they almost all came in the form of lay-ups and dunks. Gasol made two field goals outside of the key and attempted just five for the game. Everything else was in that coloured little box that teams are supposed to want to protect.

Meanwhile, the Suns watched the Spurs hit two game-extending three-pointers in regulation and overtime, and then sat idly by as the Spurs scored a lay-up with just a couple of seconds remaining in double overtime to win the game. Phoenix put its best backcourt defender — Leandro Barbosa — on Manu Ginobili and the quick Brazilian watched Ginobili dribble past him to his left and hit an easy lay-in to win the game. For the record, there were four other Suns on the floor at the time, but you might not have noticed that if you were watching the actual play because none of them were … y’know… involved in the play. Just bystanders to a colossal meltdown that the Suns might just end up regretting.

• Finally, the Chuck Swirsky Suicide Watch is on. The play-by-play man for the Toronto Raptors who reacts to Raps losses like someone violated him in a bus station bathroom, was his usual homer self on Sunday as Toronto dropped Game 1 to Orlando. The No. 6 Raptors were a popular pick to pull off a first-round upset and sure they might still do it. (For the record, Larkins picked Orlando in five). But ESPN analyst Stephen A. Smith — whose best moments in broadcasting have come when he’s ripping on the Dinos — called Toronto “soft as Cottonelle” and holds no faith whatsoever that Sam Mitchell’s crew can get to the second round.

Nor do I.

I don’t know that they’re necessarily soft, per se (although Andrea Bargnani becomes more useless by the day, Jamario Moon is a D-leaguer in disguise and Rasho Nesterovic has conned fans into believing he’s a useful tool, when in fact he’s just a tool), but this is not a line-up that breeds confidence. And what seems to not be discussed often enough is that this is a team — a .500 team — that went 25-16 at home, but an ugly 16-25 on the road this season. Stephen A. would call that soft.

Come to think of it, he’s probably right.