If you don't think the NBA still wants to drag the Miami Heat to this and multiple NBA titles...

I have the video of 2 flagrant fouls from Tuesday night to show you.

Now, the Heat certainly won Game 5 with little contest (which should be taken into account when you see the second of the flagrant fouls), but I do have to wonder how much the game would've changed in the second quarter (with Miami only up 7) if the officials had done their supposed job and called this an ejection flagrant-2.

It appears as if, after the foul, the referee is pointing off the court, as if to imply that he was ejecting Udonis Haslem (correctly, IMHO) for his two-hand clobber of Tyler Hansborough.

Under the rulebook of the NBA (from a list of all the 2011-2012 flagrant fouls (.pdf file):

A Flagrant-1 is called when "unnecessary contact [is] committed by a player against an opponent".  This is what eventually was called -- two shots and the ball.

A Flagrant-2 is called when the contact is not only unnecessary, but additionally excessive.  That's an ejection on top of two and the ball.

So will someone -- ANYONE -- outside of a Miami Heat fan explain to me why that contact with two hands was not, by definition, excessive?

Yeah, the game was in Miami.

Yeah, the crowd was supportive of the hack job.

But it's clear that the foul was unnecessary and excessive and Haslem, as the announcers point out, is a needed player in the absence of Chris Bosh.

Or are we all supposed to accept this because Miami has all the remaining star power on the floor and will be the only team people are going to want to watch play Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals (or is the league going to get rid of them to clear the road?  Game 7 against Philly Saturday night)?

But the whole situation dissolved into ridiculous when the second of the flagrant fouls occurred.

Dexter Pittman, with the game 115-78 in favor of Miami in the last minute, literally forearms to the ground Lance Stephenson.  Hits him square in the neck!

Another Flagrant-1.

At least the NBA gets this right:  Haslem and Pittman have both been suspended.  Haslem for Game 6, Pittman for Game 6 plus two more!

I'll make a prediction right now:  There will be violence in Game 6.