Our 3 refs tonight are Ken Mauer, Ed Malloy and Jason Phillips, with Tony Brothers in the replay center (and thankfully not on the court?).
http://official.nba.com/referee-assignments/Ken Mauer - His key trend is that favorites are 4-0 ATS in the 2nd Round and Conference Finals. As of right now, Cleveland is at a consensus -1 for the game, but it may become a pick em, in which case this trend is hard to apply here. Here's fair in home/away W-L splits (5-4).
Ed Malloy - The only real standouts with him is that home teams are 4-1 outright, which is good, and favorites are just 2-3 ATS, which also looks to at least not be bad. But he's Ref #2 tonight while Mauer is #1, so his trends shouldn't potentially dictate game flow at much.
Overall, I think this looks like the NBA is putting in refs that will let them play a pretty fair game. They didn't put Brothers on the floor, and these refs if they have any biases, look to just favor favorites and home teams at times, so they aren't Scott-Foster like series extenders.
What are your thoughts? Tin foil hat stuff? Good betting insight? Interesting, but coincidental?