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Arvydas Sabonis Articles.
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Virtual Reality.

by Tom Scocca | The Baltimore Citypaper | June 7th, 2000

So much went wrong for the Portland Trail Blazers in the last 10 and a half minutes of their season that it seems almost pointless to reconstruct each little disaster. In seven-game playoff series, as in geopolitical history, the turning points have a way of vanishing in the fog of indisputable Big Conclusions: The Blazers, leading by 15 in the fourth, choked; the Los Angeles Lakers, on the brink of elimination, showed the heart of a champion. Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, the league MVP and the Next Michael Jordan, seized control and rallied their team to victory.

But still, one moment stood out. It came with 8:35 remaining, with the Lakers on offense and the Blazers' lead already starting to erode. O'Neal, setting up on the left side of the lane, made a half-turn and swung his elbow hard, whacking Portland center Arvydas Sabonis somewhere north of the Lithuanian giant's collarbone. Sabonis staggered back, and a whistle blew: foul. On Sabonis.

Years ago, back when I was reading superhero comic books, the folks at DC Comics had a trick for explaining contradictions and discontinuities in their various plot lines. Some of the action, it turned out, took place on Earth Two--a place not unlike this one, but with a slightly modified history and different rules. An only child on Earth One might have siblings on Earth Two; a sidekick or villain could be killed off on Earth Two, only to reappear on Earth One. If established facts still got in the way of the story, the writer could appeal to the rules of Earth Three or Earth Four, or however many earths it took.

Which is pretty much how it was with the NBA Western Conference final. One thing would happen on the floor, the refs would see another, and the next day the writers, often as not, would report something else altogether. On one planet, Portland's Rasheed Wallace could get thrown out of a game for looking at the ref wrong; on another, Portland's Scottie Pippen could bash John Salley in the back of the head and keep on playing; on still another, Sabonis could actually commit a foul by getting clocked in the face. And watching from a fourth planet, the basketball experts could agree that the first call was fair, the second was a travesty, and the third was no big deal.

Of course, it was a big deal for Sabonis, who picked up his fifth foul on the play and went to the bench. To that point in the game and in the series, Marvy Arvy had been slowly, inexorably gaining leverage against O'Neal, willing his beat-up 35-year-old body to do the things it used to do on the Red Army squad, a lifetime ago, before his knees and ankles turned into scrapple. Knocking down 18-foot shots, cutting off the MVP's moves to the hoop, Sabonis was playing like a figure out of basketball legend.

But the refs had a different legend in mind, the one in which O'Neal finally earns his hype. And so, Sabonis got the elbow and the foul--for the second time that night--and the Blazers put a nervous, rusty Brian Grant in the post, and everything imploded from there.

It was Portland's fault anyway, no doubt. Great teams take shitty calls in stride and go in for the kill. The Blazers, unnerved on defense, stopped attacking on offense. Coach Mike Dunleavy, who'd been consistently able to find new scoring threats on his endless bench, forgot to substitute. It was a collapse of Orioles-esque proportions.

Even so, the Lakers almost didn't take advantage of it. History apparently will say this game was the proof of Bryant and O'Neal's mettle, but the Big Two were oddly inert when it mattered. It took a freak-show three-point barrage from Brian Shaw (Brian Shaw!) to draw the Lakers within striking range, and at the end it took another gift from the refs, a no-call as O'Neal slammed a driving Steve Smith to the floor, to cut off Portland's final rally.

Conspiracy-minded fans have been accusing the NBA of cheating throughout these playoffs, pulling strings to keep the big-market, marquee teams alive. Every blown call in a Knicks or Lakers game was proof of the scheme. The real process is simpler, and sadder: The refs and the analysts see what they expect to see.

O'Neal dominated the league statistically this year, and his Lakers won 67 games. In one stretch, they won 30 out of 31 games. The script says, at this point, they cap it off with a championship.

Except those Lakers, that unstoppable superteam, didn't show up for the playoffs. This team blew a 2-0 lead to Sacramento in the first round and had to pull out game five. It got routed by Phoenix in one quarterfinal game, and was a couple of more bad calls away from having that series stretched out too. And then came Portland: a bigger, stronger, sharper team, a team that clawed back from a 3-1 deficit and looked more than ready, with 10 and a half minutes left, to send the Lakers packing.

Now that task falls to the Indiana Pacers, no strangers themselves to the problem of alternate realities. Two years ago, they almost knocked off--should have knocked off--the Chicago Bulls in the conference finals. Then they lost to the Knicks last year, thanks to a phantom four-point play. This year, they won 56 games, leading the Eastern Conference and splitting their two-game season series with the Lakers. By normal basketball standards, they should be more than ready to take on the Lakers. The mystery is whether normal basketball standards will be in effect.