THAT LAKERS-SPURS GAME: With Duncan getting hit as he was going for the winning shot? No foul was called. It's just one of the infuriating things about the game of basketball, that it is so open to referee manipulation, and the most dependent on officiating of the four major sports. You watch basketball knowing sometimes the officials are going to stink. This was one of those times; I mean, I only caught the last five minutes, but Tim Duncan really got hacked.

The Albert/Walton/Jones combination, by the way, is the least credible announcing team on national television --"national" to exclude local broadcast teams who aren't supposed to be all that credible. Marv Albert is all right, he's good when he has Fratello there. But Walton and Jones are just there to have little fake fights with each other like wrestling announcing teams do sometimes. It's not as entertaining as they or NBC thinks it is. Hopefully when ESPN and ABC get the NBA, they'll lay off the cuteness and bring in people who aren't trying to put themselves over all the time.