Here is another conspiracy for you. Vince Carter drove to the basket for a slam dunk in the first half, replay showed a CLEAR, BLATANT hit on the wrist by Kendrick Perkins. No foul. So stop the whining guys. Celtics lost, Magic won. You weren't "defeated" by the referees. They made mistakes on both ends. Whine about a point here, the Magic deserved 2 there. Just watch the games, root for your team...and the better team will win. You are up 3-1. You need one win to be in the NBA Finals. If you lost a game you lost a game. The refs didn't lose it for you. No team is invincible. Trust me...I'm an Orlando fan. We were 8-0 in the playoffs until we got to you guys. Just watch the games.
The refs did interject themselves into the game in some pretty big moments, and they lacked consistency from call to call. Here are two examples (out of many):
On the possession before the Nelson drive where he throws a shoulder into Baby, gets his shot blocked, and gets rewarded at the line, Nelson had body-bumped Rondo on a floater that rimmed out. If you're going to call one, you need to call the other. If you're going to swallow your whistles on one play, do it for the other. Down the stretch, the officials were clearly giving certain calls (or noncalls) to the Magic that they hadn't been giving the Cs.
Here's another example: remember late in the 1st quarter when the Cs trapped Nelson, poked the ball out, Nelson falls over going after the ball, and then Tony Allen comes in a little bit after that and basically bumps an already falling Jameer in order to get at the loose ball? Well, Tony got called for the foul and Jameer got two at the line. Fast forward to the end of the game, where Paul is double teamed, the ball gets poked away, he bends down to pick up the ball, and just as he's about to secure it, here comes Jameer Nelson, who basically shoulders him to the ground and prevents Pierce from regaining possession and getting off a shot. If you're going to call something at the end of the 1st, you have to call it at the end of the game too.
THAT's what we're complaining about in this thread. The lack of consistency and how it seemed to favor the Magic down the stretch and in overtime. And, so while I'd probably agree that the game--OVERALL--was pretty evenly officiated, I'd also argue that the inconsistency in what was and what was not called a foul seemed to hurt the Cs and help the Magic down the stretch.
And if you wanna talk about consistency, why does Perk continually get called for cheap illegal screen fouls, while Howard and Lewis basically act like pulling lineman on about half of their screens? I don't think Lewis set his feet once all night...