The report debunks LeBron James’ claims that Lakers were wronged by officials. Actually the opposite is the case

The Los Angeles Lakers have been on the wrong end of some high-profile officiating errors lately. Most recently, LeBron James was clearly fouled by Jayson Tatum in a game-winning layup attempt against the Boston Celtics on Saturday (which the Last Two Minute report confirmed the following day), only for the umpires to swallow their whistle and allow the game into the Overtime to go where the Lakers lost.

A few weeks earlier, James was burned by a no-call on another potential game-winning layup attempt in a double overtime loss to the Dallas Mavericks. The Last Two Minute Report confirmed that Christian Wood did indeed hack LeBron to a tie and the final seconds ticked out at the end of the first overtime.

That’s why LeBron was so angry after the missed call in Boston. He didn’t see it as a one off. He saw it, and certainly continues to see it, as a pattern for the Lakers being treated disproportionately unfairly by those late-game missed calls.

“It’s building,” James said of his frustration. “You guys have seen some of the games we lost this year with late game missed calls. We had the opportunity to literally win the game. … I don’t understand what we’re doing. I watch every basketball every single day. I watch these games every day and I don’t see it happening to anyone. It’s just weird.”

It begs the question: is LeBron right? Do the Lakers actually burn themselves more often than other teams? Yahoo Sports’ Ben Rohrbach decided to investigate James’ claims by examining every last-two-minute report released this season, and on Tuesday he released his findings.

It turns out that LeBron is wrong.

According to Rohrbach’s report, the Lakers were involved in 34 false calls/non-calls in the last two minutes this season, 21 of which were in their favor. That’s more than 28 other teams. In fact, only the Mavericks at 23 have more totally wrong whistles behind them.

In other words, of the 34 late-game wrong calls that affected a Lakers game, 61.8 percent of those went to the Lakers. Only the Clippers were luckier in the late game at 63.2 percent.

Kudos to Rohrbach for the dirty work of combing through those reports. Many people, myself included, began to believe LeBron’s fall, when in fact we were marred by the high-profile individuals who are youngest in our memory.