The Los Angeles Lakers have been on the wrong end of some high-profile offense of late. Most recently, LeBron James was fouled by Jayson Tatum in Saturday’s game-winning layup against the Boston Celtics (which the final two-minute report confirmed the next day), but the referees blew their whistles and let the game go on. Going into overtime, the Lakers lost.
A few weeks ago, James was fired for a no call on another game-winning layup attempt in a double-overtime loss to the Dallas Mavericks; In the final two minutes, Christian Wood intercepted LeBron to tie the game in the final seconds of the first overtime.
This is why LeBron was so active after the missed call in Boston. I don’t see it as just a one-off. He saw, and certainly continues to see, an example of the Lakers being disproportionately abused by missed calls in this late game.
“It was building,” James said of the frustration. “You guys have seen some of the games we’ve lost this year on late-game calls. We literally had a chance to win the game … I don’t understand what we’re doing. I watch basketball every single day. I watch these games every day, and I’ve never seen it happen to anybody else. It’s weird. .
It begs the question: Is LeBron right? Do the Lakers really get burned more often than other teams? Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports decided to investigate James’ claims by digging through every last two-minute report that has come out this season, and released his findings on Tuesday.
Turns out, LeBron was wrong.
According to Rohrbach, the Lakers have been involved in 34 foul calls/non-calls in the last two minutes this season, and 21 of them were in favor of them. That’s over 28 teams. In fact, only the Mavericks have it with 23 total false whistles.
On the other hand, 61.8 percent of the 34 incorrect late-game calls that have affected the Lakers’ game have benefited the Lakers. Only the Clippers had a better chance at 63.2 percent late in the game.
Kudos to Rohrbach for doing the dirty work of digging through these reports. A lot of people, myself included, started buying into the LeBron issue when we were actually in the cloud of high profile events in recent memory.