The grass on the knoll grows again

Well. I don't know how this fits into the narrative.

The narrative being that the NBA isn't going to let LeBron James go out in the first round, which is why the league conspired to give 'Bron and the Cavaliers a 3-2 lead in the series in Game 5. The way they did this, apparently, is by ordering the refs not to call goaltending on LeBron's obvious goaltend of Victor Oladipo in the dying seconds. This allowed LeBron to replicate Michael Jordan's shot over Craig Ehlo with a buzzer-beating three to win it.

Apparently this was all part of some script. Or so the Grassy Knoll People believe, and the Grassy Knoll People always seem to make their appearance whenever there's a crucial bad call in an NBA playoff game.

Of course, this has very little to do with the reality of it, which is that bad calls occasionally happen because game officials are human.

It also has little to do with the fact that, even if Oladipo's bucket had stood, LeBron's epic triple would have sent the Cavaliers home winners, anyway.

And it for sure has little to do with what happened last night, when the Pacers came home and destroyed the Cavs by 34 points to even the series at three games apiece.

Again, how does that fit into the narrative of The NBA Is Fixing This So LeBron Doesn't Lose In The First Round?

It doesn't, of course, which is why conspiracy theories, particularly as regards to sports, are such silly business. Fixing games has happened in sports -- particularly in boxing and college basketball, historically -- but league offices dictating certain outcomes would be nearly impossible to do. Unless, as in boxing and college basketball, there's some sort of take-a-dive money being paid.

Absent that, stuff is always going to happen, and it's frequently not predictable stuff, like LeBron reprising the MJ Shot. Which is why we love sports.

Not that there isn't a certain irony to this Cavs-Pacers series.

That would be the fact that, although there isn't conspiracy at work here, the series does seem to be following a fairly predictable script. Way back after the Pacers road-killed the Cavs in Game 1, the Blob said the series seemed to destined to end one of two ways: Pacers in six, or Cavs in seven. And so it was entirely predictable that, after LeBron did his LeBron thing the other night, the Pacers would come back and win Game 6.

Not by 34, of course. But they'd win.

And now?

The script still holds.

Cavs in seven. Because there's no way LeBron is going to let them lose a Game 7 at home, in the first round, in what could well be his last game in Cleveland.

That won't be the league's doing, mind you. That will be LeBron's doing.