Complaining about officiating is a loser's mentality. I'm guilty of it, too. But it's a loser's mentality. Ask yourself this: Have you ever heard a winning team complain about calls?
It's natural, and sometimes it's justified, to grasp for straws when your season is slipping away, and for both the Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers, boy is it slipping, but they better be careful, because that mentality could linger throughout the remainder of their first-round series and into what is about to be a precarious offseason.
Let's start with the Lakers, who took every opportunity to blame the referees for Monday's 101-99 loss to the defending champion Denver Nuggets, even though they had plenty of chances to put the game away.