The refereeing was consistently bad in this series. Including one of the all-time-hall-of-fame bad calls sending Steve Nash to the line when A) there was no foul and B) Nash was nowhere near the alleged foul that was called. Another terrible call was in, I believe game 1, when Steve Nash tripped and a foul was called on, I believe, Martel Webster. For being close to a player who fell down as near as I can figure. There were some truly horrific calls in the series and I believe that more of the bad calls went against us. I guess part of the problem is that Nate McMillan doesn't complain enough. Teams and coaches that complain a lot seem to get more calls. I wish he'd go ballistic once in a while. Get a few technical fouls. Really get on the refs early and often. I'm not sure how much that would help, but it would make me feel better. Unfortunately, none of that is the main problem.
The real problem wasn't that the league was dictating the outcome of the series in advance, or that the refs have it in for us, or we don't get any respect. The problem was that we weren't aggressive enough. We became the jump shooting team and Phoenix attacked our defense, breaking us down and repeatedly getting better low post position. Our power forward fades away on most of his jump shots. Other than Jerryd Bayless, we didn't have anybody attacking the rim consistently. If we did attack the rim more and get better low post position, then we would be getting a lot more calls.
I generally don't blame the coach for wins or losses, but in a 6 game stretch, for Nate to not make those adjustments to get us to be more aggressive and attack the basket more is pretty much unforgivable.
