DALLAS – “Fix!” “Fix!”

Every jilted fan’s favorite cry reared its ugly head again in the NBA Finals, as the Dallas Mavericks cried foul (or rather, no foul) over their treatment by the officials in the last four games of the NBA Finals in general and the end of Game 5 in particular.

Unfortunately, that became the main story this past week. In doing so, it diminished two incredible feats – Dwyane Wade’s individual heroics and Miami’s return from the dead after trailing two games to none and 89-76 in Game 3.

So Mavs owner Mark Cuban may be out a quarter million bucks and the Miami Heat may be celebrating in South Beach, but it doesn’t change the fact that the NBA has a problem.

Any league is only as good as the integrity of its results. With the exception of the WWE, sports leagues thrive on the fact that the outcome is never predetermined. Efforts to alter that state of affairs have met with calamitous results – the Black Sox scandal, for instance, or the point-shaving scandals that rocked college hoops in the 1950s.

So there’s a big problem when so many casual fans assume that the games are somehow fixed. The games aren’t fixed, of course, but so many people routinely assume they are (as well as other aspects of the league, like the Patrick Ewing lottery), that the integrity of the league comes into question.

Based on the emails flooding my inbox, a great many fans have reached that conclusion about the Mavs-Heat series, and in particular about Game 5. Much like in Game 6 of the Kings-Lakers series in 2002 or Game 7 of the Knicks-Heat series in 2000,this one has all the elements to get conspiracy theorists salivating. All we need now is for Oliver Stone to order a copy of the game film.

Let’s review the events. The Mavs had a 100-99 lead with 9.1 seconds left and Miami inbounding the ball. As Miami inbounded, Wade caught the ball in midair as he was coming from the frontcourt into the backcourt. But in the opinion of the Mavs, he had yet to land in the backcourt when he made the catch, and as a result, as soon as he landed in the backcourt, a violation should have been whistled.

The NBA may have made matters worse after the fact. Yes, the league issued a clarification saying this play was legal, but it sent it a day later and gave an explanation that didn’t seem to address the reason Dallas felt it was a violation.

Then, Wade attempted to maneuver around three separate Dallas defenders (who by this time had given up all pretense of guarding their men because they knew Wade was taking the final shot). He slithered past Jason Terry and Devin Harris and to the side of Dirk Nowitzki, and threw a shot off the board that wasn’t close.

Just then, Bennett Salvatore rode in to the rescue. Yes, the same Salvatore whom Knicks fan will remember fondly for awarding Latrell Sprewell a timeout he didn’t call in that infamous Knicks-Heat game in 2000. And the same Salvatore who stood inertly five feet away while Luke Walton raked Steve Nash and Boris Diaw tried to call timeout in Game 4 of the Lakers-Suns series earlier this season.

This time, Salvatore charged in from afar to declare that Nowitzki had fouled Wade. Salvatore’s call was bogus – Dirk didn’t touch him. But in a bizarre twist, the result ended up being fair, as a still photo developed after the game showed Harris pulling down on Wade’s shooting arm. So in a way, Salvatore blew the call twice. But Dallas’s complaints about the call are unwarranted.

The Mavericks’ anger about the game went far beyond the final 9.1 seconds. Wade took 25 free-throw attempts – as many as the entire Mavs team – and Dallas felt it wasn’t getting the same respect the Heat did on its drives to the basket. As a team, the Heat took an unbelievable 49 foul shots on the evening.

All that has some wondering if there’s some behind-the-scenes scheme to screw over Mavericks owner Mark Cuban because of all the complaining he’s done about officiating over the years. This part slays me, because all year opposing teams made the exact opposite complaint: That referees bent over backwards to give Dallas the benefit of the doubt since they knew Cuban was such a vociferous complainer.

In the big picture, however, none of the Mavs’ complaints really stick. And if there really was some kind of scheme in the works to stick it to the Mavs, somebody needs to explain to me how Nowitzki’s three-point play to save Game 7 in San Antonio came to pass.

Unfortunately, the league has failed to take a couple of steps that would alleviate such problems. The first is awarding Finals games to referees less by seniority and more by competence. The league claims to rate the officials and hand out Finals assignments accordingly, but the same veteran refs end up there every year, even though a few have slipped noticeably and one (Salvatore) had perhaps the most important blown call of the season.

Second, the league might consider major league baseball’s tactic of making officials available to press after the game. Joe Crawford’s quick explanation to a pool reporter of Josh Howard’s flubbed Game 5 timeout was a rare exception to the NBA’s policy, and saved the league a lot of grief. It’s hard to see what the league would have lost by expanding the commentary to include the rest of the game-ending sequence.

As for the Mavs, they might want to spend less time looking at the zebras and more time staring in the mirror. Dallas had 48 minutes of regulation and 4:50.9 of overtime to win Game 5 before the refs allegedly conspired to defraud them of a championship. Beyond that, we’ve yet to hear the Mavs’ excuse for losing Games 3, 4, and 6. Besides, based on the final four games of the series, do we really think Game 7 would have played out any differently?

The fact is, the Mavs failed not because of officiating, but because their superstar performer got completely outplayed by Miami’s. Wade averaged 34.7 points in the series to Nowitzki’s 22.8, so the surprise wasn’t that Miami took it in six, it’s that there was even a Game 6 to be played.

So forget the refs. While Dallas has its first good conspiracy theory in over 40 years, this one is much easier to solve than that whole Dealy Plaza mess. This time, there was no grassy knoll and no Zapruder film. There was just a magic bullet wearing no. 3 for the Heat.

Mr. Hollinger is the author of the 2005-06 Pro Basketball Forecast. He can be reached at jhollinger@nysun.com.