Lakers prevail

Game 4 of the Western Conference finals was another step forward for the Lakers, reaping the benefits of hard work, luck and, as the blogworld would most certainly tell you, the NBA's conspiracy to get the league's glamour teams to the Finals.
Leave David Stern out of this. This was really about second chances, those the Lakers earned from their aggressiveness, and maybe one or two that came their way through cosmic balance.
The Lakers beat the Spurs to 13 offensive rebounds and cashed in for 26 second-chance points (20 in the first half). Lamar Odom made up for a game and a half of miscues to score eight points in the fourth quarter -- or two more than Captain Clutch himself, Kobe Bryant.

They survived their own mental errors. First a rushed shot by Bryant in the final minute, when the Lakers had a four-point lead and would have been better served by draining the clock. And then, with the Lakers up by two on the final play of the game, the one that's going to get the conspiracy theorists pounding away at their keyboards, Derek Fisher made the mistake of leaving his feet on a pump fake by San Antonio's Brent Barry, landing on him for what should have been a foul and a pair of bonus free throws for the Spurs' best shooter from the line.
"Yeah, he bumped him," Lakers Coach Phil Jackson said. "You know, games go like that."
As a result, they're up 3-1, with a chance to close out the series Thursday night at Staples Center.
The Lakers thought they were on the wrong side of the call when the officials ruled that Fisher's jump shot didn't hit the rim before going out of bounds off San Antonio's Robert Horry with 5.6 seconds remaining in the game and only two seconds remaining on the shot clock. Replays showed that it glanced off the rim.
"I'm positive Fish's shot hit the rim," Jackson said. "That ball should have been ours with a new 24-second clock."
That would have forced the Spurs to foul the Lakers in order to get the ball back, giving them a chance at two free throws that could have iced the game. Instead, Bryant had to rush a jumper off the inbounds pass, and the Spurs had 2.1 seconds to set up the fateful final play that didn't result in free throws.
Actually, the Lakers would like to bring up the issue of not shooting free throws themselves. They're wondering how Bryant, who was as active as ever, couldn't get to the line once.
"It's pretty impossible to take 29 shots and not get fouled," Jackson said. "Tonight was one of those exceptions, I guess."
Most of the 29 were jump shots and two were breakaway dunks, but you would think a guy with the ball in his hands that much would get to the line at least once, even if a ref accidentally exhaled with a whistle in his mouth. The last time Bryant didn't attempt a free throw in a playoff game was Game 5 of the 2004 conference semifinals -- known here and in L.A. as the "0.4 Game." The Spurs actually filed a protest with the league on that one, saying that Fisher could not have had enough time to catch the ball and fling it into the basket in that span.
This time Gregg Popovich and Co. dutifully accepted the ruling on the floor, and the unwritten rule that the officials don't decide the end of games. Perhaps they remembered how they benefited from the same thought process when Bob Delaney didn't blow the whistle when Bruce Bowen grabbed LeBron James at the end of Game 3 in the NBA Finals last year.
Champions tend to get calls like that. The thing is, the Lakers are getting them before they've ascended the throne. The already got away with a Pau Gasol push-off against Mehmet Okur in Game 5 of the Utah series, and now the Fisher non-foul.
Some call it the breaks. The Lakers consider themselves enrolled in the school of hard knocks.
"To look at the stat sheet and see that they never led in the game, I think that says a lot about the focus that we came out with and the commitment to playing defense," Fisher said. "We've said it this entire postseason: we're going to learn how to be champions as we're doing it. There's no script to it, there's no specific way that we have to win games. We just have to do it. And that's what we've been doing."
They're learning. For one thing, it's better to be on the Michael Jordan side of history. Barry can take a number and have a seat next to Bryon Russell, waiting for a call that will never come.