About Buddy letting it get to 8-8....
There were tons of espn edits and it seems roughly half the games were shown. I wonder if the games they cut out for air time had lots of Lebron misses, and that's why those were the cut games. What I'm getting at, is Lebron might have played so bad (on the cut games), that the other players had no choice but to keep it close. Because he did miss some super easy shots (easier than the Buddy dogs), on the racks that were shown.
Both of Buddy's shots where the CB scratched in the side, and also hit the side tit, seemed like if that didn't happen, he would have been a mile away on the wrong angle from the next OB. It looked to me on the 2 ball where it hit the tit, he was probably playing a scratch in the corner.
It also seemed like he was playing the CB behind the 8-9 combo when he was going from the 5 to the 6. It looks like he could have hit low outside to end up in the middle of the table, to play the 6, and not risk going near the 8/9 with straight soft draw like he played it.
I'm surprised when Lebron had BIH on the 1, he didn't break out the 8/9 with the CB. The 2 was right there as an insurance ball. (Although my patterns are not that great.... just seems to me that is a great chance to break out that cluster).
Man, they must have been sweating Lebron making the winning 9 ball! That shot was tough! And the announcer says 95% make probability, lol. I knew Lebron won the match, obviously, and thought for sure he was going to miss that 9, and there would be one more dog by Hall afterwards.