Reposted from the game thread:
Just watched the Pierce "charge" again on frame-by-frame on my TiVo - LeBron's feet not set (that was obvious live though), Pierce's right arm is on LeBron but does not extend at all - body-to-body contact and LeBron and Pierce throw themselves apart. If Pierce's arm had come out I could understand the call, but this was ridiculous.
Ray Allen's layup attempt - as the announcers rightly called, off the board and by the rules a goaltend - not called.
Smith's inbounds catch in frame-by-frame - Smith catches the ball, lands with both feet (2 steps, or 1 if you consider it a jump stop, which it wasn't), then immediately pivots his right foot (3 steps, or 2) and then shifts his left foot forward, finally dribbling after planting his left (4 steps, or 3).
All in the last minute of a key game.
This is atrocious - I think we knew in the first quarter we'd have to beat this team by 15 to beat them by 2, and we just didn't get it done...but still, horrible to watch in slow motion.
The NBA needs to acknowledge that it is having an officiating crisis - calls are too inconsistent, and while I don't think they're always biased for or against a given team across seasons, they are ALWAYS biased against SOME team within a given game. Evenly called games are a small minority, especially in the last few seasons, and the league needs to address this, as it is crippling their credibility as a professional sports league. The NFL has had problems with questionable calls in recent years (ie the Patriots holding the Colts receivers in the AFC title game a few years back), but has made public efforts to clean it up.
David Stern unfortunately has a lawyer's mentality - he would much rather people not talk about the problem than actually fix it. This is why the NBA is struggling to be taken seriously, and it seems to only be getting worse.