Here's the deal regarding the rules, and I'm pretty certain this applies at both the high school and NBA levels. Contact CAN be made when going for a loose ball but a player doesn't have the right to displace another when going for the ball. In other words, you can't 'run through' someone and have it be OK just because you are 'playing the ball'. There's also the concept of 'verticality'. Picture an imaginary cylinder that goes around the defender's torso and extends severl feet above him. A defender in good, in good position, can pretty much have contact with the offensive player without it being a foul as long as he keeps his arms and body within that cylinder. If he jumps, he has to jump straight up – staying within his 'cylinder'. That's verticality.

I didn't see any displacement of LeBron on the first called foul against the Pacers. I also thought the defender did a good job of remaining vertical. It didn't appear like got into LeBron's 'space'. Based on the angle, I wouldn't have called a foul.

On LeBron's foul, he clearly was moving with the player when he jumped. Watch the video closely, and you'll see Granger almost comes to a stop when he leaps for the ball and jumps almost straight up. LeBron is watching the ball and continues his momentum as he leaps – and does two things that IMHO make it a foul. One – he displaces Granger (again, you can't run through someone to get to a loose ball) and two – he does NOT jump vertically. He is clearly jumping outside his 'cylinder' when the contact is made. I, too, would have called that a foul.

Was either contact a hard foul? Of course not. Could they have both been no-calls? Of course they could have been. But from a RULES standpoint, the LeBron-against-Granger foul was actually the easier one to justify.

JMHO

to me, the cavs deserved the loss. granger's foul was a joke. and then the worst referee in the league–joey crawford–added another page to his autobiography "how to use poor judgment as an nba referee" by compounding the bad call at the other end by calling one of his own. the game was tied!!! as windhorst likes to say, it all evens out. let the game go to o.t. and see what happens there. no need to double up bad calls. a good referee or an umpire will let the game play in the final second unless the foul is egregious. ol' shag is filling his coffin up with post-mortem vomit right now. and any person who doesn't work for david stern knows that joey crawford is a corrupt referee with a fragile ego. the guy had to resign once and was suspended two playoffs ago because he can't handle himself on the floor. stern's nba resembles wrestlemania. i'm surprised arn anderson and ric flair didn't come out to drag lebron away from the floor.

*gives joey crawford a knife edge chop to the chest*

"whooooooooooooooooooo!"

I mean, this is just dumb. Take just one of those traveling gifts that James gets, or just one of those palming gifts that Williams got, give Indiana two or three points for the turnover, and it wouldn't have even come to an Indiana pass to Granger, because the game would have been over. But needless to say, people in the salmonella peanut gallery would still be writing really dumb stuff about imaginary anti-Cleveland conspiracies.

As it now stands, James cries to a ref each and every time a foul isn't called, even when a replay irrefutably shows that nobody touched the dude. If a shot is blocked or a ball is stolen, gee, how could it have happened to The King if he wasn't fouled, it's just not possible!!!

People could play one of those drinking games with all the times that James gets away with a travel and, if yesterday's game was any indication, that Williams gets away with a palm. Players and coaches who whine during and after a game losing to an inferior team just come off as babies.

Just play the game. If they were 10 points down, as a lottery team missing four guys should have been, then we wouldn't even be having this discussion about end of game calls. Simply a bad, bad performance, just like old times with James having to carry a roster on his back. But it happens, even the Lakers lost a home game to Charlotte. Who cares. The playoffs are all that matters.

And as far as your post is concerned, Ed, isn't referring to Ilgauskas' layups and dunks redundant? If you can actually tell the difference between the two, then you should apply for a job with Interpol.

But aside from that, alan t is simply wrong. The plays were not the same at all. I've watched them over and over also. Granger hooked his arm over LeBron's arm. LeBron was prevented from reaching straight up. Foul, no? On the other end, LeBron was in perfect position, and swatted a short pass. He in now way impeded Granger. I think LBJ's take made sense: maybe the refs swallow the whistle on that first play, in the last second of a game. But you can in no way justify the second. To do so would prevent a player from playing defense.

And I'm all for Mike Brown making public noise about this. It's not like the refs are consistent. There are huge home/road disparities, so I have to believe that working the refs is important. Let's get every call we can.