Closing Statement

THE BOSTON CELTICS missed an excellent opportunity to win their 17th championship on Sunday night in what would've been the most deliciously satisfying of venues, Staples Center in Los Angeles. And so, though both history and math were compellingly on Boston's side, there remained a sliver of doubt at week's end that the Celtics, leading the series 3--2, would bring home their first title since 1986, even with Games 6 and 7 scheduled for TD Banknorth Garden on Tuesday and Thursday. ¶ Then again, the Celtics' ancient rival, the Los Angeles Lakers, hardly had the look of champions. Kobe Bryant made the big play in the Lakers' 103--98 Game 5 win—a steal with 40 seconds left and a subsequent dunk that gave L.A. a 99--95 lead—but he hit only three of his final 16 shots, and he and his mates showed a marked proclivity for blowing leads. Without a sudden transformation, the Lake Show did not appear to be a strong enough team to break precedent and become the first club to win an NBA championship from a 3--1 deficit.

The only thing sure about the second week of these Finals was that the league office had breathed (might still be breathing, in fact) a monumental sigh of relief that Games 4 and 5 unfolded with no officiating controversy. For Game 5 the league office decided to reprise The Defiant Ones, including veteran ref Dick Bavetta in the three-man crew even though Bavetta had emerged as one of the central figures in a controversy initiated by disgraced ref Tim Donaghy, who is awaiting sentencing on wire fraud and gambling charges.

By anyone's account, Bavetta and the other officials, Scott Foster and Ken Mauer, called an excellent game. But had Bavetta been involved in a close call late, particularly one that favored the host Lakers, he would have become the next day's story. It seemed like a major risk, even if the NBA wanted to extend a metaphorical middle finger to the whole mess. Which seemed to be the case, since commissioner David Stern not only defended the decision but also seemed to be spoiling for a fight about it.

"Why should we let an indicted felon dictate what we do with our referees?" he said before Game 5 when asked about the Bavetta decision. "Why should we let rumormongers who write stories about Donaghy decide who should ref?" By rumormongers Stern meant the assembled press, which has reported on the Donaghy story, probably because it falls into that category known as "news."

Donaghy's allegations became public on June 10, the morning of Game 3 in L.A. A filing made in U.S. district court in Brooklyn by Donaghy's lawyer, John Lauro, outlined several claims, among them Donaghy's contention that refs intentionally made calls to help a team known for drawing higher ratings win a playoff game and that refs were instructed by the league office not to call technical fouls on certain star players because "doing so would hurt ticket sales and television ratings." The bombshell had particular resonance in L.A., since it was clear from other details in the filing that the playoff game in question was Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference final between the Lakers and the Sacramento Kings at Staples Center. Bavetta was one of the refs for that game. Helped by the 27 free throws it shot in the fourth quarter, L.A. won 106--102. The Lakers then beat the shell-shocked Kings 112--106 in Game 7 and went on to sweep the New Jersey Nets for their third straight championship.

But thankfully the refs were not the story of Games 4 and 5 last week; the basketball was. The Celtics overcame a 24-point deficit in Game 4 to win 97--91; in Game 5 Boston dug out of a 19-point hole to tie the game in the middle of the fourth quarter but Los Angeles held on for the victory.

Celtics forward Kevin Garnett would like to forget the three free throws and two clear tip-ins he missed down the stretch on Sunday. As he always does, KG played an energetic game on the boards (seven offensive and seven defensive rebounds) but did little to change his reputation as a guy who can go MIA in the clutch. "I thought it was trash," he said of his performance. "I played like garbage." That's double figures in self-flagellation. Wasted in the loss was the 38-point effort of Paul Pierce, who, had Boston been able to close out, would've walked away with the Finals MVP award and fulfilled a dream of winning a championship in the city where he had been a high school star.

STERN TWICE convened press conferences in L.A. to address the Donaghy filing, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he described his erstwhile employee as an "admitted felon." The commissioner also defended his stable of referees as "the most measured and metricized group of employees in the world," given that every call is scrutinized by the league office. But Stern had a harder time explaining why so many fans—91%, according to a New York Daily News online poll taken last week—plug into the notion that refs deliberately influence games. "It's an interesting archaeological problem," Stern said, sighing heavily. What he meant by archaeological is that the perception has been around since Red Auerbach was littering the Boston Garden parquet with cigar ashes.

Indeed, fans have long been conditioned to assume, among other things, that whistles will favor the home team; that superstars will get away with more than ordinary mortals; that games will be called differently in the last two minutes; and that calls will be adjusted in subsequent playoff games in response to complaints. In Game 2 at TD Banknorth Garden, for example, the Celtics (108--102 winners) shot 38 free throws to the Lakers' 10, prompting L.A. coach Phil Jackson to comment that the officials were reffing "an illusion." In Game 3 at Staples Center, Bryant shot eight free throws in the first seven minutes and the Lakers took 34 for the game, 12 more than the Celtics. L.A. won 87--81.

Why is there more concern about the motives of NBA refs than of officials in other sports? Let's begin with the fact that, next to stable cleaner at a horse track and general manager of the Los Angeles Clippers, NBA referees have perhaps the toughest job in sports. The game is played on a 94-by-50-foot court whose dimensions haven't changed in a century even though players have gotten much larger and quicker and now bang into each other like heated molecules on almost every possession.