| Well this has indeed been a very, very depressing series.
First of all, all the credit in the world to Detroit. They really showed up for this series and played their best ball all year. And if the Lakers had to lose to someone, I'm glad it was the Pistons. Larry Brown is a class act coach and a basketball purest that I have a lot of respect for. He never resorted to hack-a-Shaq and had his team playing quality, hard-nosed basketball. Congrats to them.
As for the Lakers, it's hard to figure out what happened to them. I guess they just underestimated the tenacity of the Pistons defense, and it really got them out of sync. I feel bad for Malone. I really would have loved to have seen him get a ring. He deserves it.
Finally, I would like to rant for a minute. The officiating in this series was god-awful. Now I in no way mean to imply that that was the reason the Lakers lost, because Detroit was clearly the better team, but god-damn they sucked. It wasn't completely one-sided was they were making some shitty calls against Detroit as well, but for every bad call against the Pistons, there were four or five against LA. The refs are lucky that Detroit won this series decisively, since it's unlikely that much of a stink will be raised about the horrible job they did.
/rant |