After my last post, I ate a good deal of humble pie (and hot fudge sundaes) this weekend. Actually, speaking of hot fudge sundaes, it was probably an omen when I stepped on something warm and thick after making one on Thursday night with my cat, Glory, meowing in the background. Half expecting to find hot fudge that I'd errantly dripped on the floor, I looked down and saw that I'd stepped in a soft stool. Glory, like the Spurs, wanted to make sure that no one wrote him off. And he sure did get my attention that night. Well, the Spurs had the Mavs' attention all along. But there's a psychological force that energizes players in elimination games. That sheer desire was just enough to hold off the Mavs in Game 5. And the NBA ensured that the Spurs had the advantage in Game 6 when it suspended Jason Terry. Right here in my own blog, I foolishly stated that the Mavs didn't need Terry to win. My father scoffed at me before the game, telling me that my head was in the sky. After the game, the reasons were more articulable: the Mavs don't have a consistent jump shooter when Terry's not in the game. When Terry plays, the Spurs have to be conscious of Terry floating around the perimeter, and this attention opens up the interior for Devin Harris to drive to the hoop. Without Terry around, the Spurs were able to use an extra defender to stop Harris from penetrating. They stifled him so consistently that even when he got to the basket in Game 6, he was too shocked to remember how to execute a layup. Either team can win Game 7, although I'll admit that the Spurs have the definite mental edge in this one. They're the legitimate favorite, and hats off to them if they finish off the Mavs in one of the greatest series in Western Conference Semi-final history. But the fact that one of these two teams will be out of the playoffs after tonight is truly unfair. The NBA concocted an awful playoff scheme, where the team with the second-best record (the Mavs) ended up with the fourth seed. Quite frankly, divisions make no sense when teams play division rivals as often as opponents outside their division. And then there was the race between the Grizzlies and Clippers to finish 6th in the conference instead of 5th because the 6th seed would get home-court in the first round due to having a better record than the mediocre Nuggets. When the Clippers and Grizzlies played late in the regular season, the Clippers tanked the game so that they would finish behind the Grizzlies. That was a great move by Clippers head coach Mike Dunleavy, as the Clippers are within a game of advancing to the Conference Finals. But how can anyone in the leage office defend a system that leads to teams intentionally losing games? Three years ago at mid-season, the NBA changed its playoff rules so that the first round featured 7 games instead of 5. David Stern made the switch because of fears that the underachieving Lakers might be knocked out of the playoffs early if the first round series wasn't extended. Stern's move demonstrated that the NBA could make playoff changes even after the regular season had begun. After countless commentators revealed the potential problems with the current system, Stern could have used his past actions as precedent for reformulating the playoff seeding system. But he didn't. And now one of the two top teams in the NBA is going to have an early summer vacation. If the Mavs lose tonight, they should have nothing but kind words for the Spurs' effort, execution, and resilience in this series. The NBA, on the other hand, is the true goat. Under a fair playoff system, the Mavs should have faced the Suns this round. As if that wasn't enough, the league ripped home-court advantage from the Mavs when they suspended Terry for a game. In a sense, Stern might be getting his revenge on Mark Cuban, but Dallas fans and the Mavericks don't deserve this fate.