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Only Charles Barkley could upstage one weird, wacky basketball game that the Suns managed to pull out, 128-122, against Barkley and the Houston Rockets in double overtime Wednesday night.

When it was over, the story was Barkley, who went after referee Mike Mathis and then ripped him to reporters.

Barkley and Mathis have a long history dating to Barkley's days with the Philadelphia 76ers.

And Mathis called Barkley for a loose-ball foul with 3.5 seconds left in the first overtime, allowing Luc Longley a pair of free throws with the Suns trailing, 115-114. Longley made one of two, sending the game to a second overtime.

There, the Suns finally pulled away with Jason Kidd scoring two points and handing out three assists in the last extra period.

Mathis was one of the NBA officials indicted a few years ago on tax charges that stemmed from an airline ticket upgrade scam. Essentially, the officials were charged with trading in their first-class tickets supplied by the league, flying coach and pocketing the money without claiming it on their income taxes.

The officials were forced to resign, but later were reinstated.

Barkley, who had 22 points and 13 rebounds, told Mathis "they never should have let you out of jail" before leaving the court.

"We lost this game for one reason -- Mike Mathis," Barkley said afterward, ensuring a fine. "He's a bad official. He's been bad the whole time I've been in the league. I hate that he came back. He cost us the game."

It was a strange ending to a wild game.

"There were a lot of controversial calls that went both ways at the end," Suns Coach Danny Ainge said. "I'm sure they're not happy with some of them. And we weren't happy with some of them, either."

Two of them went against the Suns, and both were calls that were changed after discussions. Mathis overruled Dee Kantner's out-of-bounds call that would have awarded the ball to the Suns with 1:04 to go in regulation. That call led to a Houston score.

And another discussion with 44.4 seconds to go in regulation led to the ejection of Suns forward Rodney Rogers, who had tied up Houston's Cuttino Mobley for a jump ball but threw him to the floor trying to pull the ball away.

"Those were crucial calls, and they both went their way," Suns guard Penny Hardaway said. "When they called that 'T' on Rodney, I thought, 'Oh my God. This is going to be on ESPN. It can't happen this way.'

"Every time we thought we had knocked them out, they would hit a big shot. And when they thought they had us knocked out, we would hit a big shot."

But when it was all over, the Suns had their seventh consecutive victory and the Rockets had lost for the 10th time this season after having the lead in the fourth quarter.

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