Bad calls a) Give you that slight advantage that will kill a run, will break the spirit of a team trying to upset, or will take a team's star player out of the game early, negating any chance they had. Bad calls can reeeeeeeeeeeeeally make a difference. Say Shaq gets fouled out in the 3rd quarter. That's an entire quarter where another team can pound the paint. Now, if you called everything that occurs, Shaq would be fouled out after 15 minutes. That's three quarters without Shaq, and without Shaq, the Lakers don't win.
So am I saying that if they didn't get calls, would they not have won? I have no idea. What I'm saying is we will never know, because there has never been a time when the Lakers didn't get the calls, at least since they got swept by the Spurs like five years ago.
And if I remember correctly, something shady did happen before that 3-pointer by Horry. There was a bad call or a no-call that set up for it. And the Kings took it to the Lakers the closest ever, and that's because they flopped like crazy to use the Refs against the Lakers. Other teams could learn from that.
Then of course last year, when the Spurs took it, but that was because Kobe was out, and Shaq couldn't get any calls because the NBA loves Tim Duncan, and TD took it to Shaq hard.
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