It's the Only Thing That's Free in the Sports World

The Los Angeles Lakers had no business winning last night's Game 4 of the NBA Finals. No business. People say this kind of thing all the time. "Shoulda done this... Shoulda made that... Shouldn'ta let 'em do the other thing..." But really. No business. The game was over.

Here's the situation. You need this game to tie the series at two games each. Your team has a three-point lead and possession of the ball with fifteen seconds left in the game. You pass inside to your big man who gets fouled in the act of shooting with 11.1 seconds left. Game over? Game over.

Now, all the big man has to do is make one of two free throws to make it a two-possession game and end it. Said big man is a 50% free throw shooter. Which is terrible. But really, just make one and we're done here.

Big man misses both. Okay, still we have a three-point lead. The only way the other guys can tie and send the game to OT it is to make a three-pointer. How do you stop that? Well, good defense is one way. Another way is to foul the other guys before they get into a shooting situation. Duh. Worst case scenario: they make two free throws and you get the ball back and then they have to foul you blah blah blah and then the clock runs out.

So what happens? They inbound the ball. You get back on defense. Your guy guarding the man with the ball doesn't foul him but sets up to defend two feet behind the three-point line! Guess what happens.

There is simply no excuse for losing this game. None. The Magic should be ashamed of themselves. Even with their atrocious free-throw shooting (they missed fifteen overall and seven in the fourth quarter alone) they still had the game locked up and they played stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

I can't even watch the rest of this series.

Which, it looks like, will now have just one more game.

Idiots.