That post was 15 kinds of awesome. I’m not too worried though. Even with the 20 point lead, the Spurs didn’t have the same jump. The fatigue was tangible even at that point. I hope Tim has another beastly performance like he had last night.

“I haven’t felt like this since the last three innings of Game 6 of the ‘02 World Series.”

why you gotta bring up old shit I had successfully repressed?

I am not sure who wrote the article referenced at the top, but if the author is on this blog I thought I would correct you on one item. While I have no doubt of the bloated vanity of Sasha Vujacic, he did not give himself that nickname. The Laker TV announcers Stu Lantz and Joel Meyers came up with it and when he was told he laughed and accepted it. But he definitely did not give it to himself.

It is a common mistake though, everyone seems to have that one wrong.

I knew that was lavender, thanks.

Since I know he is here I will continue….....I was listening to the radio interview that you are talking about. It is called Purple, Gold, and Blue with Andrew and Brian Kamenetzky from the LATimes Lakers Blog. Anyone can listen to the podcast at http://www.nowlive.com/desktop/default.aspx?id=100230853

The problem you were having is the 1-2 second delay. It is annoying and it happens to everyone on that show. In fact I think AK and BK (for short) are not even together when they do the show which makes it even more difficult. People are always talking over each other and there are always awkward pauses. So don’t feel bad. And yes I think you did hang up. We (the listeners) heard you disappear and then we heard “please hang up and dial again”. LOL. Anyway I thought the interview went well except for two things. First I do think you came off as arrogant at the beginning. I don’t know if it was your intention but you basically said that since the Lakers have sucked for the last 3 years that the Spurs/Lakers rivalry was no longer relevant. I think when you look at the decade as a whole that is not true at all. Consider this, If we win this series and the finals, we will have 4 chips and 5 Western Conference Championships in the decade and you will have 3 chips and 3 Western Conference Championships. Not exactly one sided either way. Again I do not know your intention but that was the way it came off.

Secondly the K-brothers tend to be sarcastic about EVERYTHING. Sometimes it is hard to pick up on and creates awkward moments. They are big Duncan fans, but were making fun of him in jest, and I am not sure you knew that, which created an awkward moment.

Anyway as a whole I though it went well so I would not feel too bad. More technical difficulties than anything else.

And stayed confident, esp hitting that late one against Finley (how ugly was that?)

I have to get back to being a Laker fan now. I just watched the game on DVR and I have to say while there were bad calls (as pointed out so well on your 2nd half game thread), they were on both sides. Yeah Duncan was fouled by Pau on that out of bounds play late in the game. However a few seconds later after Pau’s missed dunk, Ginobili not only fouls him but he touches the ball last. (Twice actually, using the slow mo on DVR). Yeah Kobe fouled Bowen (shoulder, not push, but who cares), but Ginobili rammed Pau into Duncan earlier (he missed both freebies, ball don’t lie). And as for the Lamar tackled Ginobili foul(7 seconds left), if you watch in slo-mo again you will see that Horry actually tackled Odom into Ginobili. Acutally to be honest they all kinda fell on top of each other at the same time, but definitely equal at best.

And I know you guys have not been blaming the loss on the officials, but I am just responding to a few posts from the game thread now because I just watched the replay and wanted to reserve judgement.

that’s my nickname for pslakerfan when the lakers are winning. what’s your nick when they lose? we’ll see.

i knew that isn’t on the officials when i saw the bad calls. imo, it never is on the officials, end of story. players have to play through good and bad calls.

I had to ask :p

I know I know…burn at the stake :)

First of all I want to say that the Spurs lost this game. I’ve said in an earlier blog that one of the things I hate most about my beloved team is that sometimes they blow leads. They did it three times in game 7 against the Hornets and they did it three times in game 1. They had a smaller leads in the first & second quarters and then in the third they led by max 20 pts. And if anyone has followed the Spurs they know what I’m talking about.

However, I did see a number of calls that I didn’t like. I tried to be very bias on this because I don’t want to seem like I’m whining I just want the facts ma’am.

- 1st Quarter: 7:48 Odom drives to basket. Oberto has position and draws blocking foul. He clearly had position and was outside the restricted area and was there before Odom. I still hate these kind of fouls.

- 1st Quarter: 0:29 Farmar gives elbow in Thomas chest. No call

- 2nd Quarter: 10:42 Odom in the lane for 5 sec; no call

- 2nd Quarter: 9:03 There’s a foul on Duncan guarding Turiaf. I replayed over and over and Tim did not touch him. Turiaf goes to the line for one pt

- 2nd Quarter: 8:22 TNT plays Ginobli bounce passes/dribbles between opponents legs. I enjoyed that!

- 2nd Quarter: 6:24 Ime gets a foul called on him for throwing down Odom. Once again a yell by Odom but I didn’t see a throw down.

- 2nd Quarter: 5:56 Tony gets called for a foul on Farmar. Ref called a hold; If there was one it wasn’t much to call.

- 2nd Quarter: 4:17 Odom in lane for six seconds. And then scores. You can even hear Ginobli say 3 seconds; but no call.

- 2nd Quarter: 3:55 Parker drives to right side of lane; gets tripped or reach in by Vujachich and Ref calls a turnover on Parker.

Meanwhile these calls and a few that I didn’t even mention are slowly destroying the lead. Touch foul on Duncan & Gasol hits free throws.

- 2nd Quarter: 3:09 Fisher loses ball out of bounds; might be wrong on this one, but two refs are there to see it and they give the ball back to the Lakers.

- 3rd Quarter: 10:47 Fisher runs around screens and into Ginobli underneath basket. I looked that one over. Manu already has his shoulder positioned. Foul on Ginobli as Fisher falls to the floor.

- 3rd Quarter: 9:26 Oberto called for 3 seconds. You could see the Ref was only looking at him the entire time. It shouldn’t have been a 3 second call.

- 3rd Quarter: 8:52 Duncan gets called for traveling. If you look he does not travel. But it’s called. We still have lead but it’s possible Refs trying to change that.

- 3rd Quarter: 4:42 Bryant tries for the rebound under his basket but he doesn’t have position. He allegedly gets pushed by Ime. There was no foul there, just (yeahhh) and then foul. I think I’ve heard Kobe and Odom yell quite a few times for fouls.

- 3rd Quarter: 3:55 Bryant drives to basket gets allegedly fouled by Ime. It was a clean block. There should’ve been no foul called.

- 3rd Quarter: 3:38 Duncan clearly gets fouled by Gasol as he shoots. No call.

- 3rd Quarter: 2:39 Ginobli & Vujachich get tangled up. Offensive foul called on Manu. It should’ve been a no call. Both are floppers.

- 3rd Quarter: 0:58 Kobe travels. You can clearly see him move his pivot foot. I have seen some Spurs do this one as well, but this was pretty blatant and right in front of the ref.

- 3rd Quarter: 0:27 Gasol in the paint for 5 seconds, no call.

- 4th Quarter: 11:43 Kobe falls to the floor and calls time. I’m not too sure on this one, but it looks like he traveled. No call.

- 4th Quarter: 10:47 Bruce & Sasha collide. It almost looked as if Bruce was the instigator but I couldn’t tell if Sasha was flopping as well. But Vujuachich was pissed afterwards!

- 4th Quarter: 10:03 Bruce gets a moving screen by Turiaf. 1 second later and Kobe scores on a jumper. No call.

- 4h Quarter: 8:05 Oberto gets fouled by Odom underneath the basket. There wasn’t a call made for us. Eventhough Oberto might have been in the paint for about 4 seconds.

- 4th Quarter: 6:56 Odom is underneath is own basket and gets a foul called. But which Spur hit him? No one. He just yelled again and fell on his own.

- 4th Quarter 5:50, Gasol goes up for a defensive rebound and yells. If you look at the replay, there’s no way he can get it. You do see Duncan behind him, but this is the playoffs there wasn’t much contact there and Duncan does have his hand on Gasol’s back, but again Gasol couldn’t have gotten that board. That’s why Gasol yelled to get the call. Foul on Duncan

- 4th Quarter: 4:32 Fisher gets ball drives to hoop and gets fouled. I could not see any Spur foul him. Fisher hits two free throws. Spurs still stuck at 81.

- 4th Quarter: 1:04 Duncan gets rebound, Gasol clearly hits Duncan’s arm, no foul, but another turnover for the Spurs with a missed shot.

- 4th Quarter: Duncan shoots and doesn’t get foul called. Both Gasol and Odom are all over him.

- 4th Quarter: 0:25 Kobe clearly pushes off on Bowen to get easy shot in the lane, no call for Spur.

- 4th Quarter: 0:12, this one’s debatable. Towards end of the game, Ginobli goes for a three. Vujacich (Spelling) possibly hits Manu on the arm. I can’t be for sure on this one. But that could’ve been three free throws.

This was very painful for me to review this video again. I like taping the games because it pains me to see my Spurs lose and I like watching them win they win. This was very similar to game 5 of the Lakers/Jazz series. Utah totally outplayed the Lakers at the Staple Center but couldn’t beat them. There were a ton of calls in that one that went against Utah. That game 5 was extremely pivotal and Utah ended up losing. I don’t want to see that kind of refereeing. Please don’t get me wrong there were a few calls that might have benefitted the Lakers in our game 1. But these bad calls that I wrote about mostly came at the critical times that we had leads and also at the end of the game. The Spurs in my opinion have never gotten much from the Refs even with the past four championships. I’ve heard before that some refs don’t call as much for visiting teams because of the crowd. And how can you blame them sometimes. Crowds yelling this and that and sometimes it’s hard to see every play. But I saw this in the Utah series and I’ve seen it in game one of our series.

Again, I don’t want to sound like this whining but look at the video again (if you doesn’t pain you) and you’ll see it. I might be wrong on a couple of things, but I don’t think I’m wrong on a lot of this.

I’m still upset that the Spurs lost a 20 pt lead. I think they were finally exhausted. It has to demoralize a team if they don’t get some calls.

I tell you I don’t want to look at this kind of stuff again. I do have a life. And it pains me to see us lose like this. I don’t want to blame the refs for the entire game. We did have some legitimate turnovers and we didn’t make some free throws. But certain calls at critical times took us out of the game. Last, Ginobli needs to bounce back. He if starts scoring with our big three and bench. LA should be concerned. However, they might not have to be concerned if the officiating is the same in game 2.

Gasol and Odom sure do yell a LOT when they are out on the court. Any time a Spur gets close it’s “YAAAA! AAAAAHH!!! OOOHHHH!!!” “AAAAH AAAH AAAH!!!”

But to be fair, let’s not harp on the refs or calls…1) The Spurs are a championship team-defending champs-they should have been able to play through it. 2) the Lakers also did not get about 6-8 calls thier way as well (some Gasol dunks, Odom got hit a few times, Fisher’s 2 drives to the lane, no calls…) Anyways, a LOT of fouls that usually are called under the basket/in drives were not called. I think that as well as clogging the lane doomed us. Honestly looking back on the score, and in the game, only Tim and Tony were on. Ginobili, El Corpseo Fin, Horry, Udoka, were all off. Bowen was hot early, then cooled considerably. And we shot WAY too many 3’s when they obviously were not going in. The Lakers realized this….so they doubled Duncan and clogged the lane, taking our only 2 offensive threats at the time out. Once Ginobili shakes off the funk, and we start knocking down the 3’s like we were in the NO series, we’ll be fine :)

I have watched NBA games for some 25 years now. Boy am I old! Used to be a Celtics fan before I moved to SA. I got there when the Admiral arrived. I watched a lot of these playoff games over the years and I firmly believe bad ref calls are happening. They might be unintentional or intentional but they are happening and we cannot miss this part of the game. It really does effect our runs even though we have a history of losing our leads. I’ve seen it happen without bad calls as well. Every lead we had we lost due to critical turnovers and bad calls that helped LA. I honestly don’t want to make this like whining but I just want to tell it how I see it. It does help me vent when the Spurs lose.

I’ll try to get back to other things.

Other than losing leads, I don’t know what’s up with Ginobli. He almost looked like he was drunk out there. But in this series we have to have our big three step up in every game and limit Kobe to 20 pts per game. It can be done. I still feel very positive about this series because I really do think we are a better team than the Lakers. But like in the past, most championship teams do not lose a lot of games during their run for a championship. But this is a different time with tougher teams. If we make it past the Lakers I really don’t hope we run out of gas against either the Pistons or Celtics.

What was up with Kobe. That was another thing I didn’t like. He seemed to just turn it on when he wanted to.

Nixiack, thanks for the constructive criticism. Good points. But we may not have open threes until someone starts doubling Duncan. That’s where we need Manu to start driving to the hoop. Can he still do that? Or is something wrong? I heard bad finger. Bench will only start scoring more if they double Timmy; otherwise we’ll have to work hard for threes.

He had a torn fingernail (to the end of the quick from what I heard) and had a splint/band thing on his hand-it was his shooting hand- Also he has a bum ankle, and from what he said himself “various other things”....but he’s a gamer and should be fine….or else we can really lose this series.

As far as Kobe just turning it on, yes he can do that….sadly enough. Difference will def. be if we can just limit/keep him to himself when going off, and not getting all his team involved, we should be ok through what PtR calls “Kobesaults”. Also, we did do one thing really well last night—for whatever (refs, D, whatever) we did turn Kobe, and the Lakers into jump shooters. If we can limit thier penetration and do that, it will go a LONG way to winning.

A Kindergarten teacher tells her class she’s a BIG Spurs fan.
She’s really excited about it and asks the kids if they’re Spurs fans too.

Everyone wants to impress the teacher and says they’re Spurs fans too, except ONE kid, ...named Josh.

The teacher looks at Josh and says, “Josh, you’re not a Spurs fan?”

He says, “Nope, I’m a Los Angeles Lakers fan!” She says, “Well why are you a Los Angeles Lakers fan and not a Spurs fan?”

Josh says, “Well, my mom is a Lakers fan, and my dad is a Lakers fan, so I’m a Lakers fan.”

The teacher’s not real happy. She’s a little hot under the collar. She says, “WELL, if your MOMS an IDIOT, and your DADS a MORON, THEN WHAT WOULD YOU BE?!”

Josh says, “THEN I’D BE a SPURS FAN!!”

NUFF SAID….

it was an old yankee & red sox thing… didnt know it would get this much attention…

anyhoo, goodluck with the finger/nail thingy. didnt know that your season is hinge on that…

i thought our black mamba’s pinky finger debacle was silly…

come to think of it, maybe just maybe the REFS has something to do with it…. oh oh maybe the REFS also had something to do with the plane’s mechanical trouble….

reality check people 1-0…

You owe me a new keyboard, one not covered in Pepsi :p