The law says: In a series between two evenly matched teams, the team that gives away a game (and understanding what this means is crucial to understanding the law) will lose the series 90% of the time; a percentage that is directly proportional to their chances of winning the game they gave away.
Basketball playoff history is so replete with examples of this that I can’t believe no one discovered this law sooner. Before I delve in to the examples, however, we have to define what we mean by “give away a game.” Of course, there is a subjective element to saying a team gave away a game, so we will have to do our best to remove that level of subjectivity from our definition. We do that by saying, a team gives away a game when (within the laws of statistical probability) they had a 90% or more chance of winning that game (meaning, they would win that game 9 out of ten times in that exact situation) when they proceeded to lose it. A team losing a game on a last second shot is not enough to qualify under this law unless what transpired before that shot was so unlikely and improbable that it would not happen 90% of the time.
Now let’s give some concrete examples to show what we mean.
One of my favorite examples (and one we’ve see in a countless time on replays) was Bird stealing the inbound pass from Isiah in game 5 of the ECF, and feeding it to DJ for the score and the win. That loss was so devastating for the Pistons (who were, to my mind, the better team that year, as the Celtics were old, beat-up and on their decline) that they never recovered, even though they won the next game.
Other examples, in no particular order, are: from this year’s playoffs, the Grizz up by 5 with about a minute to play in game 4, with KD and Westbrook shooting bricks, go to OT and lose the game. Although they won game 5, they never recovered from that loss and lost the series. The 2000 Blazers/Lakers series had two such games. First, game 3, where the Blazers were ahead for the 1st three quarters only to lose by 2 at the end. And then, of course, there was their historic game 7 meltdown, where they were up 75-60 in the 4th. Game 2 of Heat/Mavs series, during the 2011 finals, with the Heat up 88-73 with 7:15 to play in the game (LBJ and Wade were preening), collapsed and lost. The Heat, like all the others, never recovered from that loss. The Spurs, last year’s game 6, up 93-89 (with 28 seconds to play) missed a couple of free throws, which they would normally make, only to have Ray Allen send the game to OT, and lose. Game 3 of Mavs/Heat 2006 Finals, Mavs were up 91-81 with 5 minutes to play (about to go up 3-0 in the series) and they only end up scoring 5 more points in the next five minutes, losing the game by two points 96-98 and never winning another game.
Of course, there are many reasons why this law hold true so often, reasons that I don't have time to get into, lest my wife bans me from the bedroom. So I'll just end with this:
Which team does this law apply to, as we sit here today: You guessed it, the OKC Thunder.
A note to Scal: I need a snazzy name to this law, like your law of national embarrassment.
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