Blazers Featured In YouTube Video Highlighting Favorable Calls For Lakers

The Portland Trail Blazers are featured prominently in a YouTube video that seeks to highlight favorable calls for the Los Angeles Lakers. The video, which includes comments made by Grantland's Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe on a podcast, shows select clips of games between the Lakers and the the Blazers, Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Timberwolves and Sacramento Kings during the 2012-13 season.

Thanks to Galaxy Bird in the FanShots. Video via YouTube user mathewsoa.

Update: Blazersedge reader Nick Van Excellent informs me that this is his handiwork.

Here's an excerpt from Dave's write-up of the officiating during Portland's Feb. 23 loss to L.A.

As the game progressed the referee crew of Pat Fraher, Mark Lindsay, and Mike Callahan made strange call after strange call and then flat out started blowing the game. Remember how earlier in the year the league issued a post-game statement saying that a charge drawn by Ronnie Price--a judgment call that was fairly close on the hardest decision to make in the sport--was erroneous? If they're going to do that for this game they'll need to employ Saturday Night Live's Fox News Sketch errata scroll.

We got a little bit of the "Kobe throwing himself into a defender on the drive and getting the whistle while the Blazers don't get a call on legit contact" stuff, but you have to let that go. It's home cooking, the star system, stuff that's been going on since the Showtime days and really peaked in the Shaq era. For a little bit I wondered if the refs were in a Y2K time warp, maybe remembering the old Lakers who approached 60 wins every year instead of looking at the actual Old Lakers who move like molasses and owned a 26-29 record heading into this game. But no matter how frustrating that is, you let it go.

Phantom calls on LaMarcus Aldridge--Portland's All-Star, most bankable and best player--bringing him to 5 fouls and forcing him to sit go beyond the pale. It's like they had a target on him all night. Aldridge drew his first technical foul in living memory arguing in frustration. But even that doesn't compare to the horror of the last 2:35 of the game.

The Lakers are currently in a tight race for the No. 8 playoff spot in the Western Conference; they've made the postseason every year since 2005.

-- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter