Rick Adelman thought he was coaching the better team in the 2002 Western Conference finals when the Sacramento Kings almost dethroned the Los Angeles Lakers in seven games. Ultimately, the Kings failed, not because of a lack of will and talent, but because they didn’t have what the Lakers got.
“In reality, we had a chance to win in the seventh game,” Adelman said in a 2016 interview. “I thought we were the better team, but you know the mark of a true champion is that we opened the door for them and they came through hard and they took it away from us.”
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As Adelman noted, missed free throws did them in. The Kings made only 16 of their 30 chances at the line in Game 7 and shot nearly 66 percent overall in the series. For a team that shot 75 percent from the line all season, their sudden drop-off in such a strong series was hard to make sense of.
Did the refs truly rig the 2002 WCF?
Adelman was classy enough to give the Lakers their flowers and lament how they shot themselves in the foot in a winnable Game 7. If not for Robert Horry’s last-second 3-point heave in Game 4, the Kings could have ended the series in five games. That’s how close Sacramento was to stopping the Purple and Gold dynasty in its tracks.
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Nonetheless, a discussion surrounding the 2002 WCF wouldn’t be complete without a deeper look at the Game 6 controversy. Besides the fans who saw it in real time, disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy added to the speculation of a rigged ballgame. Donaghy asserted that his colleagues openly informed him that the league wanted the Lakers to win Game 6 to extend the series.
Well, Roland Beech, the founder of 82games.com, put his detective hat on and did all of NBA fandom a favor by objectively breaking down the calls in that game. He found out the officials cost the Kings six points due to unfavorable calls throughout the game. Interestingly, the Purple and Gold won by four.
However, the question remains: Did the review of the film show the refs were blatantly involved in rigging the game? Apparently, at least for Beech, it does not.
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“If Bavetta was really trying to rig the game, would he have called a tie up jump ball at the 3:26 mark (and subsequently had a bad toss that gave the ball to the Kings) with the Kings ahead by two when he could have called a foul on Divac?”asked Beech. “Would he have called the foul on Fisher at 1:27 that helped bring the Kings back within a point with plenty of time left? Would he have called the blocking foul on Fox with 0:20 when an offensive foul would have basically sealed the game? Doubtful.”
As Beech noted, the number of free throws was irrelevant to the argument, as the Kings were actively trying to slow Shaquille O’Neal down by purposely putting him at the line, not to mention Kobe Bryant’s activity and aggressiveness.
“As a whole, these plays suggest to me the refs were calling the game honestly, if perhaps not well,” he suggested.
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The one that slipped away
The Kings were the best regular-season team that year. They won 61 games, primarily because of their offense, which worked like a well-oiled machine. Many thought their movement-heavy schemes and the use of skilled big men were a predecessor of the modern game.
In that series alone, the variety of their offensive weapons was on full display as five players averaged double-figures. The sixth guy was putting up just a shade under 10.
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However, while Sacramento’s shot quality was vastly superior to L.A.’s, showing nerves at the line was their ultimate downfall. Each free-throw miss gave the Lakers life, and a team with championship instincts doesn’t need much more than that.
Adelman’s line still says it all. The Kings should have shut the door behind them, but they didn’t. The Lakers just simply knew better than to waste those opportunities.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Oct 8, 2025, where it first appeared in the Old School section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.