The NBA Champs, in Trouble Against Dallas

In these NBA Playoffs, you may win an emotional game today, next game, you get your heart ripped out.

That is what these 2006 NBA Playoffs has become. And that is what the defending NBA Champions, San Antonio Spurs, realized.

Everybody starts talking about what changes should be made before training camp opens. Then you look up, and the other team is on the brink of sending your team to an early summer.

''It's like that every year,'' San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said. ''Honestly. Every year, every round. Even the Finals last year. We won the first two, and it was like Detroit couldn't play. The Spurs were a dynasty.''

''Then after the next two games, we were the most worthless people that ever lived, the players should be traded and the coach should be fired,'' he added.

Even Sunday, when the Spurs were wiping away the disappointment of their Game 3 loss Saturday night, Popovich joked about the feeling. When a couple of reporters were chatting with general manager R.C. Buford, Popovich wondered what was going on.

It was a faux news conference, he was told.

''What, have I been fired already, or do I have to lose one more game?'' he joked.

That's how precarious a closely contested NBA playoff series is. And it will happen again if the Mavericks can push, just enough, to bring the defending NBA champions to the brink of extinction.

''I guess that's why it's a seven-game series,''' said Michael Finley, who was on the Mavericks' side for all those years, but now finds himself playing against his former teammates in Dallas in an emotional seven-game playoff series.

''In college, if you have a great game that night, you can go on and be a national champion. But in the NBA, it's a series. And usually, the better team wins in that series,'' Michael Finley said.

''Even though you may think things are going your way for a game, it can easily change the next game. It's the team that remains mentally consistent that overrides that,'' Finley added.

The San Antonio Spurs are hoping that they will be the ones who'll be mentally consistent throughout this best-of-seven series against the Dallas Mavericks. If these Spurs are not careful, they can very well see their NBA title slip away as early as round two.

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