Clippers 88, Grizzlies 90: I Saw Blue

I don't care about what you say about the refs. There's been such a backlash towards to ref hate that some people have been blind to it. There's no way around it. It doesn't mean that they have favored the Clippers, but all of the refs we've seen this series should be fired. And tonight has been quite possibly the worst of all. It doesn't mean that they favored one team, but there's one fact I can't get over.

With 24 seconds left in the game, Tony Allen missed two free throws in a row. The Clippers had to rebound, and they would be down only 4, with a chance to end the series. Instead, Randy Foye stepped on the baseline to give the ball back to the Grizzlies. Or so it would seem. Prime Ticket showed the replay. They showed Foye's left foot. And I saw blue. I saw the blue paint of the key in between Randy's foot and the white baseline. I saw blue. And that one ref killed the Clippers' chances. Dan Crawford stood on the baseline and called Randy Foye out of bounds when there was space in between his shoe and the baseline. So, the fix wasn't in. The refs sucked both ways, just like all series. But that single call changed the game. Dan Crawford. Number 43. He forced a game 7.

[Note by Steve Perrin, 05/12/12 12:06 AM PDT ] Sorry, don't really like to do this, but I need to step in on this one. It wasn't Foye's left foot that went out of bounds, it was his right foot. I DVR'd the ESPN broadcast, and haven't seen the replay to which you're referring, but if they zoomed in on his left foot and said "See, he's inbounds!" then they were being disingenuous. This was the correct call. You'll notice Foye didn't argue a bit.

There were some laughably bad calls this way, but Crawford was not the guy making them. Marc Davis (who called the T on Reggie, granted Memphis a timeout when the other ref had a jump ball, and called a foul when Tony Allen traveled) had a real knack for going out of his way to bail out the Grizzlies tonight. But if you get outrebounded 48-32, you usually lose.

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See you early Sunday morning.

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