What I described happened on G2553 with USCI_A in SPI mode. Given the fact that various code samples on the net do not handle this behavior it seems that it is

What I described happened on G2553 with USCI_A in SPI mode. Given the fact that various code samples on the net do not handle this behavior it seems that it is either happening only for some configurations or only on some versions of the HW. But: when you see even bytes on SPI dropped or replaced with previous ones, add NOP.