Barber: NBA replay reviews are killing our buzz

It’s so hard to put Christmas behind us. The gifts. The good cheer. The delicious leftovers. The officiating at the end of the Warriors-Cavaliers game.

In case you missed it in an eggnog stupor, the NBA on Tuesday released its Last Two Minute Report on the NBA Finals rematch at Oracle Arena, and it wasn’t exactly graded with an A-plus. In fact, the league noted that referees Derrick Stafford, Leon Wood and Gary Zielinski failed to call at least four fouls in the final 120 seconds of Monday’s contest.

These included contact by the Warriors’ Kevin Durant on Cleveland’s LeBron James with 1:12 remaining, a bear hug that James wrapped around Draymond Green at the 33-second mark, and two fouls by Durant as James drove to the basket at :27 and again at :25.6.

Presumably, Stafford and his crew got a few things right as that game wound down. Like, they didn’t hit the injured Stephen Curry with a technical foul for yelling from the stands, and no one was called for a late hit on the quarterback.

All in all, though, it was a poor showing by the Men in Black Pants, and their calls had a direct impact on the Warriors’ 99-92 victory.

How, a lot of basketball fans are wondering, could this have happened in one of the most highly anticipated games of the year? NBA officials can use instant replay to determine whether a last-second basket beat the shot clock or game clock, whether a shooter’s foot was on the 3-point line or behind it, whether a ball was out of bounds and whether a defender committed goaltending while swatting a shot, among other quandaries. Why not review foul calls and non-calls as well?

It’s a continual debate that spikes every time a game ends with a controversial call, and it isn’t limited to the NBA. The NFL was the pioneer in video replay, and has the most byzantine system of review. Major League Baseball is along for the ride now, too. And many coaches, writers and fans think none of it goes far enough. Humans are fallible, they argue. Cameras are not. The former should be allowed to use the latter in the execution of their duties.

I agree that we need to move the threshold on instant replay. But we should be going in the other direction. Don’t expand replay reviews; get rid of them altogether.

Are you nodding your head in agreement or scowling at my naivete? The answer might depend on how you answer another question: Are sporting events so important that they demand just outcomes? Or are they primarily entertainment?

For most of us, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. But which way do you lean? Give me the 360-reverse-jamming, chorus-line-end-zone-celebrating, bat-flipping entertainment. And I make no apologies.

Don’t get me wrong. I love sports. They hold powerful personal significance. I cried when Franco Harris made the Immaculate Reception, and ran to class to show off the autograph Kareem Abdul-Jabbar mailed me when I was in second grade. The wife and I missed half a Lamaze class to watch UCLA wrap up the 1995 men’s basketball championship, and some of my dearest memories of my oldest brother, now deceased, take place in the stands at Raiders games at the Los Angeles Coliseum.

That’s how it should be for true believers. But we should still be able to take a step back and realize that we’re talking about the entertainment industry. A lot of dollars ride on NFL games (as they do on TV ratings and Spider-Man box-office numbers). But it’s entertainment nonetheless.

Human error has always been a part of officiating. I can’t recite every perfect game in MLB history, but I sure as heck can recount the blunder by first-base umpire Don Joyce that robbed Armando Galarraga of perfection in 2010.

That said, I’m fully in favor of eliminating mistakes by the rules keepers. It would be wonderful if we never saw another called strike just outside the zone, or another foul on which James Harden wasn’t actually touched, or another flag for pass interference when receiver and cornerback were being equally grabby.

Unless it steals from my entertainment. In which case, I’ll happily take the botched call.

We watch sports for a lot of reasons. We admire the physical superiority and beauty of our athletes, and applaud their fathomless efforts. We want to associate with winners. All of those factors point to replay reviews. They make us want to get things right.

But there’s another reason we love athletic competition. In fact, it’s the deepest reason of all. It’s the drama.

There is nothing in the other areas of our humdrum lives to simulate bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning, or a sudden-death playoff at The Masters. These events might occur 2,000 miles away. They might involve 19-year-olds. And yet they make our hearts pound like a half-hour on the Stairmaster.

And there is one surefire way to thwart this drama - by stopping play so that officials can stare at a video monitor for a couple minutes, or wait for an advisor in New York to make his decree.

Remember that big Patriots-?Steelers showdown on Dec. 17? It was as good as advertised, right up until the time Pittsburgh tight end Jesse James caught a short pass from Ben Roethlisberger and dove to the goal line with 28 seconds left. Officials signaled the go-ahead touchdown. Then came the review.

This was the crucial play in the crucial game of the season in the AFC, and the intensity dissipated like a leaky balloon while the striped ones figured out whether James had secured the ball before he broke the plane. Football fans are still debating whether it was a catch, but it wasn’t the ruling that ruined this moment. It was the unplanned, buzz-killing intermission.

It was as if we got to the scene in Star Wars where Luke was zooming down that narrow trench in his X-wing, taking aim at the Death Star’s soft spot, when suddenly the image froze so that a couple of astrophysicists could debate whether the hero really would have outrun those TIE fighters.

Please, spare us the debate and cut to the explosion.

Our holiday experience would not have been enhanced had Stafford’s officiating crew taken time to review Durant-vs.-LeBron. They might have gotten the call right, but the rupture of our rapture would have been all wrong.

Their present to us was a no-call and the continuation of play. That’s sports. And that’s entertainment.