MIAMI – This one hurt as much as any defeat ever hurt. And the Heat, perhaps unable to stare in a mirror and see another blown lead, another failure to protect home court, another collapse like a straw hut in a tornado, turned their ire and their fingers squarely at the officials after losing to the Knicks in a series-deciding game yet again.
“We don’t deserve this. We’re a better team than they are. By far. We are. We’re a better team than they are. Due to the circumstances, I gotta say what I feel,” uttered Alonzo Mourning after Miami was devastated once again by the Knicks, this time by an 83-82 count as his 29 points simply were not enough.
And what did Mourning feel? “The last two games we got screwed on two calls,” the Heat center said.
That would be Game 6 when a touch foul on Dan Majerle put Allan Houston to the line to complete an improbable Knick comeback from 18 points down and thwart a series-clinching victory by Miami. And yesterday, the Heat feel they were shafted on the last meaningful possession.
Clarence Weatherspoon, of all chaps, took the final shot and the ball bounded away toward the corner where Latrell Sprewell managed to flag it down. What happened next will eat at the Heat’s craw for months.
“For [ref] Bennett Salvatore to point one way and say our ball right there in front of me and then he huddles up with his colleagues and changes the call, and right there in front of Spree?” said Mourning, who played with so much passion and fervor that the act of losing was an unconscionable sin. “Spree didn’t call time before his foot was out of bounds. Nobody called time out. They thought the clock was going to run out. We got screwed over two calls.
“We’re a better team than they are and nobody will convince me different.”
Salvatore afterward gave his interpretation of what happened at :02.1.
“I have Sprewell calling timeout but I wasn’t sure where his foot was,” said Salvatore who worked the game with veteran Dick Bavetta and Dan Crawford. “I didn’t believe he was out of bounds but I wanted to check with my partner [Bavetta] that he was not out of bounds when my whistle blew. He confirmed that there was no question that the timeout came before he went out of bounds.”
But that came as little consolation to the Heat, who made all sorts of statements that will have Rod Thorn handing out fines for several weeks. Tim Hardaway, for example, referred to Bavetta as “Knick Bavetta.”
“They’ve got to start doing something with these refs, making them accountable for some of the bad calls they’ve been calling,” said an irate Hardaway, who declined to speak about game specifics, but instead leveled the refs. “We work as hard as everybody else works and we don’t get nearly as many [calls]. I see why they call Dick Bavetta ‘Knick Bavetta’ because he called seven straight calls down on their end and then called nothing when Mash [Jamal Mashburn who appeared to get hit on a drive at 79-79] went to the hole two or three times in a row. And that’s all I’ve got to say.
“I think we deserve this series but they won it. They came here again and won. [NBA VP of operations] Rod Thorn needs to talk to them guys [the officials] and stop cheating for them guys,” Hardaway continued as the cash register kept clanging. “They done a terrible job. that’s all I got to say.”
And that was enough.
