Five wrongs and NBA still can't get it right in Fisher-Barry no-call

Brent Barry was faulted by some observes for not selling the foul on Derek Fisher at the end of Game 4. Sasha Vujacic Related Links GALLERY: Biggest No-Calls in Sports History

With the benefit of instant replay, the NBA admitted the other day that it appears a foul should have been called on Lakers guard Derek Fisher for banging into San Antonio's Brent Barry at the end of Game 4 in the Western Conference finals.

Taking that to the next illogical step -- logic has almost nothing to do with the NBA's approach to fouls, officiating, human error and videotape -- the benefit of instant replay reveals that the Lakers' 100-92 victory in Game 5 Thursday night merely unknotted a best-of-seven series that had been tied 2-2. In other words, because Barry should have gone to the line with the opportunity to tie or win Tuesday's game, either in regulation or overtime, the Spurs should still be alive and going home for Game 6.

While it was at it, the NBA announced that, yes, Michael Jordan did shove Utah's Bryon Russell in a clear offensive foul before he hit The Shot that produced The Pose in the 1998 Finals clincher in Salt Lake City. The benefit of instant replay also showed that there was, in fact, a second shooter behind the wooden fence on the grassy knoll in Dallas on that eventful day in 1963. And let's see, oh yeah, the league now believes that Mrs. O'Leary's clumsy old cow, in kicking over that lantern in that barn back in 1871, should have been whistled for a flagrant 2 foul rather than a flagrant 1.

Gee, uh, sorry, Chicago.

Sorry in advance, too, to the Detroit Pistons and the Boston Celtics and even the Lakers, should similar mistakes mar what's left of the Eastern Conference finals or any part of the 2008 Finals.

The manner in which the NBA handled the Fisher/Barry non-call from Tuesday, when it happened and ever since, was and is wrong on so many levels, it almost defies description. Although I will settle for one that the inimitable Charles Barkley offered prior to tipoff Thursday: Asinine.

Asinine, specifically, that the NBA felt moved 24 hours after the play in question to issue a statement acknowledging that its referees were wrong in not calling Fisher for a foul. What good possibly was going to come from that? The Spurs and their fans weren't going to feel any better -- and, in fact, might feel worse -- knowing that a blown call had possibly cost their team a chance to defend its 2007 championship. Especially since most of the 18,797 in attendance and the millions watching at home knew it was a blown call the instant it happened.

Verifying it, without offering any redress or remedy, is straight out of the "Wound, we'd like to introduce you to salt'' etiquette manual. "Fessin' Up for Messin' Up'' might make for a swell country-western song, but it is no sort of answer here.

Neither is the casual explanation -- in what was believed to be an all-time first -- that referees do, in fact, call games differently according to the clock or the calendar. NBA spokesman Brian McIntyre said that the three-man crew of Joey Crawford, Joe Forte and Mark Wunderlich was heeding a league guideline for dialing back their whistles according to the situation.

"There is an explanation in the rule book,'' McIntyre, a longtime league exec, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times, "that there are times during games when the degree of certainty necessary to determine a foul involving physical contact is higher. That comes during impact time when the intensity has risen, especially at the end of the game. In other words, if you're going to call something then, be certain.''

As opposed to the rest of the time, of course, when it's OK to guess, play a hunch or flip a coin.

The NBA has spent years, nay, decades stonewalling on precisely these sorts of issues. Fouls and non-fouls, we've been told, are defined entirely by the officials in the moment and only occur when the guys with the whistles say they do (pretty existential, if you stop and ponder it). Judgment calls are not reviewable -- hardly anything is, although the Hawks and the Heat had an extremely odd do-over of 51.9 seconds in March because some Atlanta scorekeeper goofed back in December.

Furthermore, referees do not have to make themselves available to explain their decisions or even to provide a rules interpretation, if they don't want to. And their errors, we constantly are reminded, are part of the human element of the game, which is the same thing baseball traditionalists say these days about botched home run calls and fair-foul confusion.