Jamahl Mosley is usually careful when asked about officiating or foul calls throughout the game. He will usually quip to a reporter, "You aren't trying to get me in trouble, are you?"—a quick wink at how quickly players and coaches can get fined for any criticism of the league's officials.
It was impossible not to ask about the officiating after the Orlando Magic and Toronto Raptors combined for 52 fouls and 58 free throw attempts Tuesday in playing the second-longest game of the season for a Magic team that already plays the longest games among any team in the NBA.
Mosley's mind quickly did not go to what his team did or did not do. He went to balance.
He did not care that his team was called for fouls, he just asked that his team get the same respect. The Magic like these physical rough-and-tumble games. It is how they have played. But they want their physicality rewarded as much as it is penalized.
"I don't mind the whistle," Mosley said after Tuesday's loss to the Raptors. "I just want it to be the same. I'm OK with the whistle. We like physical, we like aggressive. We like being that way. That's our brand of basketball. It's OK. I just like it being very similar and consistent. That's it."
Mosley likely did not like what he saw Wednesday afternoon.
The NBA admitted two critical officiating mistakes on its Last 2 Minute Report in the final two plays of the game.
The league said Orlando Robinson should have been called for a moving screen that took out Kentavious Caldwell-Pope on the Raptors' final possession. That forced the Magic to switch Tristan da Silva onto Ja'Kobe Walter. Da Silva still defended Walter well and forced a tough shot. But Walter made it to give the Raptors a one-point lead with 0.5 seconds left.
On the ensuing final lob then, the league again pinned Orlando Robinson with an uncalled foul for grabbing at Wendell Carter's arm as he tried to go up for a lob off the inbound. The ball hit off the rim and the clock started early ending with a jump ball that ended the game.
The Magic still had their chances to win the game—da Silva's defense on Walter was very good and Banchero's lob hit the rim and would have been difficult for Carter to corral. But these were two consequential errors that impacted the final result.
More importantly they had their chances to win well before then.
As Mosley also often likes to say, games are not won or lost on the last play of the game, they are won or lost throughout the contest.
The Magic are hard to officiate
And that is one of the things that is at the heart of the Orlando Magic's struggles this season. Officiating and how the Magic are officiated is one of the big challenges they must overcome.
Orlando is a physical defense. The Magic are often pushing and prodding and reaching and grabbing trying to see what they can get away with.
There is a bit of a strategy of betting the refs will not call everything on them.
Orlando even has a bit of a reputation of playing dirty at times. Opposing fan bases have been frustrated with some of the hits the Magic lay. Even Tuesday's game got a bit testy with R.J. Barrett trying to go at Franz Wagner after an inadvertent hit to the head, and Jakob Poeltl putting a hand on Wendell Carter to earn a technical foul before Carter forcefully brushed it away and the teams needed to be separated.
The Magic are just as physical offensively. They want to attack downhill and use their size to force players to bite and get to the foul line. Paolo Banchero is a foul merchant, instantly lifting the Magic from one of the teams that never got to the foul line in the post-Dwight Howard era to one of the leaders at getting to the foul line.
Forcing fouls and free throws are essential to the Magic's offensive strategy just as defending with physicality and testing the limits of the officials' range is part of their defensive strategy.
Orlando ranks second in the league with a 27.3 free throw rate. Banchero ranks fourth in the league with 8.4 free throw attempts per game—he shoots a league-leading 11.4 per game since the All-Star break.
But Orlando not only gets to the line a lot, the team gives up a lot of free throws.
The Magic give up a 29.8 percent free throw rate, the highest in the league. Orlando is giving up more free throws than it takes. That is the biggest blemish defensively on the No. 2 defense in the league.
That is what the Raptors did so well in these past two games.
"They shot way too many free throws," Franz Wagner said after Tuesday's loss. "We didn't guard the three-point line well. I think they got out in transition, we fueled them a lot in that third and then they got some offensive rebounds as well."
There were a lot of factors. Transition was definitely one of them—the Raptors outscored the Magic 19-10 and 15-9 on fast-break points in the two games. But free throws were a big factor too.
Toronto shot 30 free throws (to Orlando's 42) in Sunday's game and then 35 to Orlando's 23 in Tuesday's game. The Raptors had a 37.5 percent and 43.8 percent free throw rate in the two games.
Tuesday's 43.8 percent free throw rate was the eighth time the Magic gave up a free throw rate greater than 40 percent (two free throw attempts for every five field goal attempts). They had just five instances last year, another sign of how the defense has slipped in some intangible way—the Magic were 24th in the league in opponent free throw rate last year at 26.4 percent and led the league in free throw rate at 28.7 percent.
The third quarter felt especially bad. The fouling kept the Raptors in the game and gave them some rhythm that threw the Magic off. Toronto won the quarter 31-19 and it was only Orlando getting to the line that kept things from getting worse.
The Magic were looking for answers and believe they were not allowed to have the same physicality that the Raptors got.
That has been the case recently too. Mosley played coy when asked about the screening during Stephen Curry's 56-point performance but said there were many uncalled-moving screens in that game.
Orlando wants officials to give the team a fighting chance to set up its defense.
"I don't understand. I really don't," Mosley said after Tuesday's loss. "I know how physical they are. I know how aggressive they are. I understand how they were grabbing and holding and then we get the tic-tac fouls. That's where it becomes something that you have to think about and I don't understand why. Because we were attacking the basket just the same. . . . Us not getting the whistle, I have to figure it out. We have to keep looking at the film and seeing where it is and what it is and what it's not."
Ultimately it is on the Magic to figure that problem out and find the right balance to their physicality. Orlando committed many of those fouls by being late on rotations and on its back foot. The whistle always favors the more aggressive team.
This remains a frustration for the Magic. They at times feel like they are not able to be as aggressive as they want to be and they do not get the same benefit of the whistle.
And then there are games like Tuesday where there are clear errors that have major consequences to a team in the middle of a playoff hunt.