Crawford travel, goaltending call again puts refereeing at forefront of Clippers-Spurs

Over the course of a seven-game series, calls are going to go both ways, each team is going to perceive slights and everyone just has to hope the officiating variance evens out by the end.

That goes doubly when each game is decided by a narrow margin.

The referees were once again at the forefront of the unbelievable first-round series between the Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio Spurs as the Clippers evened the series at 3-3 on Thursday. 

One game after Clippers head coach Doc Rivers was fined $25,000 for complaining about "some brutal calls" and Blake Griffin reportedly spit on the court in protest, officials were forced into justifying some key decisions late.

First, with roughly 14 seconds to play and the Clippers up two, Jamal Crawford plainly traveled before the Spurs could intentionally foul. The footage isn't great, but trust that it was pretty egregious.

On the very next possession, offensive cylinder interference once again became the topic of conversation. In Game 5, DeAndre Jordan negated a potential go-ahead basket by touching the ball above the rim on what he called "a dumb play."

This time, it was Boris Diaw trying to tap in a Marco Belinelli miss and Griffin swatting it away. Diaw was called for interference but because he had touched the ball first, inside the cylinder, it was offensive, not defensive, basketball interference.

There's a lot going on there – Diaw playing above the rim, Griffin making what could have been an insane block – but it slowed the game to a crawl and made the letter of the law a focus, something the league probably wants to avoid.

The easy solution in the case of the offensive cylinder interference calls is to switch to international rules, where the ball is live once the initial shot attempt hits the rim. There's little for teams to exploit with this tweak and the primary goal of basket interference remains accomplished since the ball still has to hit the rim and so few shots just hang above it afterward.

Hand-wringing over something that doesn't come up too often may not seem like a priority, but in a series that's locked 3-3 with a 615-610 aggregate score (favoring the Spurs), it makes sense to legislate out a potentially controversial judgment call that doesn't serve an actual purpose.