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Following the Los Angeles Lakers’ overtime loss to the Boston Celtics last weekend — ABC’s most-watched Saturday debut regular season NBA game since 2019 — much of the conversation turned to a bad call on LeBron James. The last seconds of control and the amazing reaction to it.

James knelt in protest and Lakers teammate Patrick Beverley drew a technical foul for pointing a photographer’s camera at an official as evidence that Celtics star Jayson Tatum had contact with James. The layup gave Boston a one-point edge to start overtime, and the Celtics won 125-121.

Head coach Eric Lewis admitted to pool reporters after the game that “the staff missed the game,” and on Sunday, the National Basketball Referees Association’s official Twitter account tweeted, “Referees make mistakes like everybody else. We made one at the end of the game last night and that was gut-wrenching for us. Game causes sleeplessness as we try to be tough judges.

In the league’s final two-minute reports each day, in consideration of incorrect calls, “incidents of referees occurring within the last two minutes of the game or within three points of the game will be reported at any time during the last two minutes of the game.” Fourth quarter (and overtime, if necessary).”

In the final two-minute report of Saturday’s game, the league singled out two missed calls at the end of regulation — a foul by Tatum and an offensive foul by Anthony Davis with 18 seconds left that negated Beverly’s go-ahead basket on its final possession. Celtics (and rejects James’ position).

Overall, both teams benefited from bad calls, but the focus was on the final play, because we were all into the game, and the Lakers’ feigned resistance drew more attention.

“The best player in the world can’t get a phone call,” Lakers coach Darwin Hamm told reporters. “It’s amazing.”

“It was building,” James added to his frustration level after several last-second misses. “You guys have seen some of the games we’ve lost this year with late calls. We had a chance to win the game … I don’t understand what we’re doing. I watch basketball every single day. I watch these games every day, and I’ve never seen it happen to anybody else. It’s weird.

It seems odd to me that the league’s highest-profile franchise and highest-profile player are somehow flirting with the idea that the officials (and the NBA by extension) are conspiring against them.

in order to, I decided to review every last two-minute report for the Lakers this season.To see if a review of each late call in 19 recent games supports or disproves their claims. The NBA thought the officials had a total of 34 missed calls or no calls in those games, and 21 (or 61.8%) were missed. Favor Lakers.

Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James defied a potentially game-changing call in Saturday's overtime loss to the Boston Celtics.  (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James defied a potentially game-changing call in Saturday’s overtime loss to the Boston Celtics. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)

Questions came in for most of the other teams, so I did the research, and here’s a chart of the number of close games for each team, the total amount of foul calls or calls in those games, the number of those calls. The percentage of favoritism for each team and the number of favorable calls received by each team:

Only five of the league’s 30 teams had more than 60% or less than 40% of missed calls in their favor, according to an internal NBA review. The study does little to dispel the idea that bigger markets get more favorable calls than smaller ones, as the few outsiders include the Clippers, Lakers and Warriors, along with the Jazz and Kings on the low end.

One of the few conclusions we can draw from this information is that the senders were not identified.

Take their latest double overtime loss to Dallas. The league ruled that Mavericks big man Christian Wood should have been whistled for another last-second foul that would have given James a chance to win the game in regulation, leaving James at the free lane. James made sure to speak after the Boston loss. What he didn’t mention were the three early foul calls in the Lakers’ favor.

The NBA’s decision earlier this month that 76ers Joel Embiid’s contact with Lakers guard Russell Westbrook’s failed game-winning shot was “fixed” and rightfully called into question the accuracy of some of the last two minutes of reports. That’s fine, but if your position is that the league is actively trying to keep its highest-profile team and highest-profile player from boosting television ratings in the playoffs, the past two minutes of reports — and common sense — tell a different story.

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Ben Rohrbach is a senior NBA writer for Yahoo Sports. Do you have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach



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