the official could've seen that ball touch the ground in real time. It's barely visible in one frame of the slow-motion replay video. IMO the right call (again: independent of this particular catch -- I'm speaking in general here) is to call it a catch on the field when it looks like a catch and then use replay to answer the question of whether or not it actually was a catch. It's as if the existence of replay has now led the officials to start by calling close plays incomplete, then using replay to validate the call. I'd rather they just go off of what they see, not what they think happened, and let the replay decide what really happened.

This on top of the fact that the game has gotten out of control with penalties. I watch a lot of football and virtually every game has over a dozen penalties. Everything's a personal foul now. The officials have made themselves part of the game, not just disinterested third parties. This is of course substantially worse in basketball than it is in football, but it's still bad.

Tim