Dallas sports fans are no stangers to ugly endings.
In 2006, the Mavericks crumbled in the finals against the Miami Heat, ending abruptly what looked to be a season destined for the championship.
In 2007, of course, Tony Romo fumbled the snap on a play during which he had no business on the field, sealing a first round playoff-loss to the Seahawks. And let's not forget about the 4th quarter collapse against Baltimore in the final game at Texas Stadium last December.
Saturday night may have any of this previous ugliness trumped. Honestly, it probably does. Mark Wunderlic's blown call capped off a final stretch that saw Denver out-play Dallas thoroughly and a week that saw Dirk Nowitzki's personal and professional life called into question in a public arena.
Regrettably, though, it wasn't over. Josh Howard blew up, charging towards Wunderlic to, um, discuss the call. Mark Cuban shoved a cameraman and proceeded to tell Kenyon Martin's mother exactly how he felt about her son as he finally exited the court.
A few hours later, the NBA owned up to their mistake.
This is a respectable move; but, as Dirk and Brandon Bass have said since, not much consolation for a Mavericks team who have found themselves in a 3-0 hole to the Nuggets.
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"I don't think it makes anybody feel better," said Nowitzki. "We don't get the last seven seconds back, to kind of play it over again. So more than anything, I think it made it worse."
Bass echoed the sentiment, saying that the announcement "made it a little worse."
Whether or not Dallas could have been down 2-1 rather than 3-0 is, at this point, completely irrelevant. The call was made or, in this case, not made, and it's over. Is it unfair that referees missed a fairly obvious and potentially game-changing call?
Probably.
That Dirk could have made a shot within the five-minute mark (he didn't), that the Mavericks' usually top-class foul shooting dried up late, that Dallas forgot about Jason Kidd, who had killed Denver with post-ups; these can be chalked up to that inevitable human fallibility.
But because Mark Wunderlic wears a gray shirt and can potentially change the direction of any contest by merely blowing his whistle, we want to chalk his error up to something else; a divine injustice of sorts. We want to believe that some dark and loathsome skullduggery is afoot.
When the NBA made the statement of admission late Saturday night, it was a statement, ultimately, of human fallibility. It wasn't fair, but neither is life, so get over it.
This is the last thing that MFFLs and, to be sure, Mavericks players want to hear.
Yes, the non-call was terrible, particularly if you consider yourself a Mavericks fan. But until the NBA's admission, our illusions of a great, maybe other-worldly injustice covered up what last week really was; a bad, ugly, hapless week.
It was a terrible week to be a Mavericks fan no matter how you look at it, one in which any scapegoat would do, so long as they distracted us from the fact that Dallas has been beaten soundly, fairly and squarely, for the great majority of this series--the fact that, perhaps, Dallas' 2009 is at its end.
So did the Mavericks get a fair shake on Saturday night? Maybe not. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last, for the Mavericks or any other team in the league (okay, maybe the Lakers). Life isn't always fair; and neither is the National Basketball Association.
