Addition to the Ref Saga...

"My single favorite old-school moment of the past two decades happened at the end of Game 5 of the 1993 Eastern finals, when Chicago's Jordan, Pippen and Grant famously blocked four straight Charles Smith shots to clinch the victory in New York. Were the blocks clean? I don't know. Did the Knicks complain after? No. Because you had to watch the whole game -- that play didn't just happen. All four quarters were played with that same cutthroat intensity. Unlike today, the officials didn't change their minds midway through the game on what contact was acceptable. They didn't try to manage the game. They let the players decide what happened and intervened when necessary." This is exactly the inconsistency all of us have been mentioning.

This is from Bill Simmons' article today on ESPN's Page 2. He's making my point. Also, it's a good read in general, so I recommend going through it. He makes some points that I don't think anyone has bothered to mention, such as the referees' being excruciatingly old for this increasingly uptempo game. Obviously, that isn't the refs' faults, but the NBA's.