Horry, Stoudemire and Diaw Suspended

Phoenix Got the Calls

May 15, 2007 1:00 AM

I really hate people complaining about the referees. It's just so tiresome. And on some level -- I may be crazy with this -- I feel it is the job of fans to think like champions. Be mentally tough. Play through adversity. Think like a winner, not a whiner.

But this game was something. I was rooting for Phoenix -- in the name of a tied series and exciting play deep into the playoffs -- and through Phoenix's comeback I was at first pleasantly surprised as a handful of 50/50 calls went the Suns' way. But it just kept going. San Antonio couldn't catch a break. Nash drew a charge on Duncan when he was well inside the no-charge line (UPDATE: I'm most likely wrong about this one, I need to watch the video again, but if indeed Duncan caught the ball inside the line, Nash can draw the foul inside the line), Raja Bell's flop drew paydirt ... By the time Leandro Barbosa barreled into Tony Parker and Parker got called for the foul, I started to feel sort of cheap.

I wanted Phoenix to make the big comeback, but not like that.

I hate to fuel the whiners and conspiracy theorists out there. And it's premature to say this was really called the Suns' way. It felt like that from my seat, watching it once in real time.

I would love for an intelligent, non-partial person with a good DVR to break down all the questionable calls and give us a report. From watching it in real time, I feel the referees were a big part of this victory. I'd love to proven wrong.

Of course, plenty more happened. There were great plays by both teams (especially Steve Nash's left-handed behind-the-back bounce pass in the lane). There may be suspensions. We'll talk it all out in the days to come.

UPDATE: Adam Hoff at WhatIfSports, who admits he has never been a San Antonio fan at all, and recently examined the calls in Game 2 in this series and found that San Antonio was getting the benefit of the doubt, stayed up late examining every possession of the fourth quarter of Game 4.

San Antonio started the quarter up eight, so it's a meaningful section of the game. You should read Hoff's description of every play. He found that of all the foul calls that might have been considered "bad" in the fourth quarter, the the Suns were the beneficiaries of five, and the Spurs were the beneficiaries of none. By his estimation adding in no-calls and violations makes the disparity even greater. Here's Hoff's conclusion:

In real time it definitely seemed that Phoenix was getting the majority of the close and/or dubious calls and no-calls and that bore itself out in the "research." There were a lot of reasons the Suns came back to win (Amare bouncing back, Nash being a straight pimp, and Brent Barry and Michael Finley taking a couple of bad fadeaways), but there is no denying that the calls were a HUGE factor. And beyond the +5 for Phoenix, there were probably a half dozen other calls that were really close and/or not typically called in the fourth quarter of a playoff game (or even during the first quarter of an exhibition game). So the Spurs definitely wore it from the zebras. It felt like an alternate universe, to be honest. And in San Antonio! What a strange night.

2007 Playoffs, Phoenix Suns, San Antonio Spurs

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