One of the first basketball games I remember watching in its entirety was a hotly contested game in 1971 between the Knicks and their heated rivals, the Baltimore Bullets (now the Washington Wizards). It was a tight game, and down the stretch, with the Bullets clinging to a one-point lead, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe had the ball near what would now be the top of the three-point circle, guarded by Walt Frazier. Frazier, in an attempt to steal the ball, lost his balance and tumbled into Pearl, sending both all-stars to the floor in a heap. It seemed certain that a foul would be called and one was – on Monroe – perhaps for not breaking Clyde’s fall efficiently enough.

Although I was rooting for the Knicks, who went on to win the game, something seemed amiss to me. My father and brother laughed at the call and one of them said, “that’s the homecourt advantage!”

The Dallas Mavericks got a bitter taste of that kind of favoritism this weekend, having lost the pivotal Game 5 of their NBA Finals series with Miami 101-100 in overtime on two foul shots by Dwyane Wade with 1.9 seconds left. Dallas fans have several reasons to fume.

First of all, the foul in question was a ticky-tack call even in the most innocuous scenario, and it was an outrage when made at a game-deciding moment. Wade drove through four Mavericks, each of whom seemed aware that looking at Wade might constitute an infraction. They threatened his shot and disrupted his path to the basket, but Dirk Nowitzki, on whom the foul was called, barely – if at all – touched Wade, and the contact neither inhibited the drive nor the shot, which missed.

The old expression, “no autopsy, no foul” may be a deliberate overstatement, but it only stands to reason that any foul called on a game-deciding play – in the finals, no less – should stem from contact that alters the shot. Nothing that happened in the waning moments of Sunday’s game did.

In addition to the foul, Dallas fans have reason to be outraged at the timeout that was called by their team in the waning moments of the game. As Wade took his free throws,it reasoned that Dallas would wait to call its final time until after a made attempt on the second shot so as to move the ball to half court and set up a final attempt to win the game.

The sequence of events are in dispute,but after Dallas coach Avery Johnson motioned to his players to call the timeout following Wade’s second shot, the referees awarded the Mavs their timeout before the second free throw, depriving them of a chance for a reasonable final play. Given that a time out between free throws all but eliminated any chance Dallas had of winning the game, it’s hard to imagine that the refs interpreted the signal as Dallas’s desire to call the timeout then.

Dallas fans also have every right to be angry about the suspension of swingman Jerry Stackhouse for his flagrant foul against Shaquille O’Neal in Thursday night’s Game 4. In a game full of hard fouls, Stackhouse’s on a driving O’Neal was the most dramatic, as Shaq’s momentum sent him tumbling into the seats behind the basket. His teammates responded so threateningly, in fact, that a technical foul was called on Heat forward Antoine Walker.

But the actual foul was much less than the melee suggested, and indeed far less vicious than say, Shaq’s forearm shiver that turned Stackhouse’s face into a bloody mess in Game 1. Dallas players have absorbed numerous hard blows during the postseason as opponents have tried to see if somewhere beneath the newfound tough exterior lie the old, soft Mavericks.

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban also complained that Wade’s foray into the backcourt before his game-winning drive amounted to a backcourt violation, but the rules suggest otherwise. He also claimed that Wade pushed off before beginning his final drive, but that’s just the sort of foul that usually doesn’t get called in that situation.

Some Dallas partisans complained that Wade attempted as many free throws (25) as the entire Dallas team, (the Heat shot 49, nearly double Dallas’s total). But these complaints are mostly hot air. Dallas took – and hit – a lot of jump shots. The Heat’s jumpers weren’t falling, so they attacked the basket. Also, Dallas often fouled Shaq, which accounts for nearly half of the disparity.

This bevy of complaints sets up coach Johnson to play the “it’s us versus the world,” leading into tonight’s Game 6, but he doesn’t have to. In most phases of Game 5, Dallas outplayed Miami. After being outrebounded in Games 3 and 4, Dallas turned up the energy and controlled the glass by a 42-33 margin.They also outshot the Heat, 45.7% to 44.9%. All this was accomplished on the road without one of their best players, while the Heat’s stats were racked up with their best player, Wade, having another superhuman night – 43 points, the tying basket in regulation, and the winning points at the end of overtime.

Several commentators have suggested that the Mavericks should blame themselves for not defending Wade better. But they did hold him to 11-of-28 shooting, and for all of his heroics, it’s useful to note that Wade was 6-of-20 at the 4:57 mark of the fourth quarter, and went 5-of-8 thereafter. That’s a normal statistical variation for a 48% shooter, not a defensive breakdown. The Dallas defense forced Wade to shoot jumpers all night, and it limited his effectiveness. In Dallas, Wade probably won’t find the officials’ whistles so generous.

Unless the Mavericks completely lose their cool tonight, they should send this series to a seventh game, and no matter which way the refs are blowing the whistle, they can take solace from those Bullets of 1971. You see, Baltimore met the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals, where homecourt held for six games. Then, in Game 7, at the Garden, the Bullets overcame several questionable calls to eliminate the Knicks 93-91. The refs are often a frustrating part of the game, but usually talent prevails, and thus far, despite their 3-2 series deficit, the statistics suggest that Dallas is the more talented team in this series.

mjohnson@nysun.com