"The deciding play will be debated until the end of eternity. The missed free throws won't. Both were responsible for leaving the Wizards furious, utterly miserable, and one loss deeper into a rollercoaster season that continues to suffer more downs than ups.

Washington head coach Flip Saunders didn't try to hide his frustration over the foul call that gave Indiana its improbable 114-113 win over the Wizards.

With five tenths of second remaining, Pacers guard Earl Watson inbounded the ball to Mike Dunleavy, who caught it above his head and sandwiched between DeShawn Stevenson and Brendan Haywood, leading to an immediate whistle by refereee Ed Malloy. After the officials reviewed the play, and ruled that Haywood had committed a foul with one tenth of a second left, Dunleavy calmly sank his two game-clinching free throws.

Saunders said he looked at the play ten times.

"If the foul was called on Brendan Haywood, the game was over," said Saunders. "They could've said maybe there was contact earlier or whatever, but the call was on Brendan and I don't even know if there was much contact. But if there was, it was after - he caught the ball, he came down, he tried to shoot it. It's impossible to do that in five tenths of a second. If you look at it on the film, you can't do it so that was a bad call."

But fate had already intervened 6.1 seconds earlier, when Gilbert Arenas missed two free throw attempts that would've extended a Washington lead to three points, a shocking development after Arenas had done the same thing with a chance to tie Boston two nights before.

"I might've been thinking about it," said Arenas, who despite his first triple-double (22 points, 11 assists, 10 rebounds) since March 19, 2004, sat sunken and bleary-eyed in the chair in front of his locker afterward. "I don't know.""