Shaq's BLATANT off. goaltending with 1:01 left

[kenmaine]

I admit that I'm biased, but IMO it was an obvious goaltend. Regardless of what the rule book says, it's usually just a matter of whether the ball is 'over the cylinder', since it's pretty unrealistic to make it a judgement call by the ref on whether it has a chance to go in.
But regardless of that one call- no one expects the refs to get every call correct- I'm just asking, how many questionable calls went in the Cavs favor, vs. the number that went in the C's favor? Looked to me like the Cavs had about a +6 in bad calls. A difference of three or four calls/game is all it takes for the refs to decide the outcome.
And yes, it would have helped if Ray or Paul could have hit a shot or two down the stretch.
But back to Shaq, I can't wait till that big 400 lb. offensive lineman, I mean center, retires!

[pearljammer10]

Does anyone actually know is Hickson was out of bounds? Or is it just more speculation? From viewing the game on TNT, there was never any evidence to show either way that he stepped out. And you can base the call of the Celtics reaction, I mean NBA players over react to every call that is made or not made.

[nickagneta]

Some of the calls that went under my skin during this game that really bothered me were:

The call of blocking against Glen Davis in the first half in which he obviously had set position and Jamison ran him over and the call went against Davis.

The call of offensive foul against Rondo in the second half when he was driving to the bucket and the Cav player(either Jamison or Williams) just jumped right in front of him and the call went against Rondo in a textbook example of what blocking is.

The LeBron Crab dribble in the 4th quarter where he took three steps went to shoot the ball, lost control of the ball, the ball went in the air, he caught the ball(a second traveling no call) and then went in the air and laid it in.

The sequence under the Cavs basket where Perk had the ball was hacked across the arm by Shaq, controlled the ball, was hack across the arms by LeBron lost the ball, the ball hit off LeBron's knee and the ball was called out of bounds off Perkins. The ref was less than three feet away from the situation staring right at it and missed two fouls against the Cavs stars and then called an out of bounds play improperly.

Here's the thing about all four plays, they were sooooooo poorly called that the TNT announcing crew went so far as to call them wrong and in favor of Cleveland. People were making fun of it in the game thread because you seldom see criticism of the refs by the national announcers when the calls are blatantly favoring one of David Stern's favorite teams.

And, once again, it was the proper call by the refs on the no goaltending.