The most controversial postseason series in NBA history is the 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings. It’s one of the best series ever, and saw Los Angeles come out on top in seven games before toppling the New Jersey Nets in the NBA Finals.
The controversy surrounding the series stems from the fact that the officials appeared to be awfully biased towards the Lakers, especially in Game 6 in Staples Center, where Los Angeles shot an unfathomable 27 free throws in the fourth quarter en route to a 106-102 win. It was so bad that the game was believed to have been brought up in the Tim Donaghy scandal.
More than a decade later and it seems like there are still some hard feelings with regards to how things went down. Chris Webber and Shaquille O’Neal were on the set for TNT on Tuesday night, and in the midst of an otherwise normal conversation where Shaq praised Webber’s Kings, the ex-Lakers big decided to bust his chops about how that series ended. This led to Webber throwing a haymaker.
Chris Webber reminds Shaq that "dirty refs" robbed the Kings in that game 7 against the Lakers in the WCF pic.twitter.com/mMWbeLKNMN
— Gifdsports (@gifdsports) March 7, 2018
“All it took was you and some dirty refs,” Webber said when Shaq brought up how the Lakers ended up winning that series. Everyone on the set laughed about this crack, but let’s face it: The Kings absolutely got hosed in Game 6 of that series.
