Not because of the play on the court.

Not because Miami fans still can’t seem to figure out what time playoff games start.

Instead it was because the officials who refereed the game lacked the guts to kick players out of a game for nothing short of thuggish actions.

First there was this play:

A pretty hard foul, but, in my opinion, not excessive. Tyler Hansbrough made contact with the ball first, then his momentum carried his hand into Wade’s head.

I guess a flagrant one is fine, though. Wade was bleeding after all.

But then there was this crap:

Udonis Haslem’s only purpose on this play was to send Hansbrough a message.

Forget making an attempt at the basketball; Haslem barely made contact with Hansbrough’s ARM. The Heat big man went straight through the former Tarheel’s face and it boggles my mind that none of the officials could figure that out.

This goes beyond ignorance, not being able to see the play correctly or just missing the call. These refs knew Miami was already without Chris Bosh and they knew if they kicked Haslem out, it would leave Miami with Juwan Howard (almost in old people diapers), Joel Anthony (10.3 PER, undersized), Ronny Turiaf (lol) and Dexter Pittman (Don’t worry I didn’t know who he was until yesterday, either) to man the paint. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Speaking of Pittman…

A dead man could’ve made the correct call on this play.

You know, until this happened, I really did think the refs made the wrong choice on the Haslem play because they didn’t want the Heat to be at a disadvantage.

After they called Pittman’s backwards clothesline a flagrant one, though, I figured the crew just had a collective education level on par with a sixth grader.

The NBA should suspend Haslem for game six. It’s going to suspend Pittman.

It should also suspend Jason Phillips, Derrick Stafford and Greg Willard for the rest of the playoffs, because they’re the referees who turned this game into a laughing stock.