Stage Is Set for Dramatic Finish

The Mavericks are angry because they believe that an eligible Stackhouse would have meant the difference between returning to Dallas up 3-2 vs. returning to Dallas down 3-2, and they could be right.

Stackhouse, in my opinion, shouldn't have been suspended because his hard foul on Shaq wasn't premeditated like James Posey's rundown of Kirk Hinrich or Raja Bell's clothesline takedown of Kobe Bryant or Reggie Evans of Denver grabbing the crotch of the Clippers' Chris Kamen. Anyway, there's a bigger issue here.

All those "hard playoff fouls" that old-school players talk about having issued or suffered in the 1980s and 1990s . . . the NBA is legislating those fouls out of the game. Thus, the league suspended Stackhouse.

One league official told me the NBA isn't going back to the '80s and '90s and has zero tolerance for the kinds of physicality recent ex-players romanticize. The league strongly prefers, we're told, teams that play the way the Suns, Cavaliers, Wizards, Bulls and Dallas -- yes, the Mavs -- play. The NBA wants a quick, athletic, fast-paced, artistic game that is fan-friendly. The increased TV ratings are in and bump 'n grind basketball is out.

That doesn't mean, however, that as many as two more championship games between Miami and Dallas won't produce some nasty confrontations.

Riley and Johnson, without naming each other, have taken their shots.

Everywhere the Mavericks turn, their manhood is now being questioned, perhaps even by their coach, who moved them out of their luxury hotel on stylish Brickell Avenue in downtown Miami and about as far from South Beach as possible. Johnson even insisted the Mavericks players have roommates before Game 5.

It's a thrilling NBA production: star players and demonstrative coaches embroiled in controversies one day after another, and now the ultimate bit of drama -- the possibility starting tonight that somebody we're so invested in will be eliminated.