Foul Play!

The Magic blew it. Flat out gave the finals away to the Lakers on a platter. They had a great opportunity to make a series out of these Finals on Thursday. They played well - just like they have been doing the previous 2 games, and they were ahead most of the game. They were as usual mistake-prone, but they still had the game and the talent to stay ahead. They kept missing foul shots. Dwight missed 2 at the end when even one of it would have sealed the game. Then leading by just 3 instead of 4 or 5, Jameer Nelson stood underneath the 3-point line and let D-Fish pull-up and take a fairly open, game tying 3. One too many stupid plays for the Magic. Not sure if all the millions are any help to Stan Van Gundy in dealing with this. He should be going nuts! It's one thing for Dwight Howard to miss free-throws - not that thats acceptable, but for Hedo Turkoglu to miss throw after throw in the fourth quarter? You have to say it was all between the ears for both these guys. One of Hedo's foul shot was so flat and so horrible, he looked more like a Turkish Shaq for a moment rather than the Turkish MJ. The guy did everything including hitting clutch threes and making great moves to the basket and led the scoring for Magic with 25, but couldn't hit his throws. He shot 8/13 both from the field and the line and the Magic as a team shot a lower percentage from the line in game 4 than they did from the field through the entire game 3. More statistical proof that the Magic just choked away the series. And choke is a tough word to use in any context.

At 2-2, this series would have been tantalizingly poised. Lakers would have been under pressure and given their lack of killer instinct and focus at times, they could have easily fallen down 3-2 going back to LA and who knows what would have happened. Apparently most teams leading the finals 3-2 end up winning. But now Lakers are the ones leading 3-1. Magic probably will win game 5 and the Lakers will finish them off in game 6 as most experts predicted. Of course Magic are a resilient team and I expect them to be competitive through the end of this series, but it is going to end with a 4-Th ring in Kobe's fingers. Speaking of Kobe, he had a horrible shooting night - just 11/31, but the good ones always make key plays. He has not done a whole lot since that great game 1, but he grabbed Dwight and pulled him down and prevented a dunk towards the end of this game. That foul put Dwight on the line and those were 2 more free throws he missed. Phil also spoke about another play where Kobe grabbed the rebound away from Dwight and got fouled in the process. He said that was one of the turning points in the game. It's sometimes interesting how the coaches look at the game. But the real story of the game was those 2 missed free throws by Dwight Howard. Sad, considering he had a 16-21 game with 9 blocks! Of course the only statistic that matters now are those 8 missed free-throws and 7 turnovers. How ironic is it that another Magic trip to the finals is punctuated by free throws. Nick Anderson's 4 straight misses in game 1 of the 1995 finals is already legendary. Rockets won that game 1 in OT and the Lakers won this game 4 in OT. May be it should be called the "curse of Shaq". He was Magic's first super-star and they have had enough drama with foul shots ever since.