Before tonight's Game 6 in San Antonio, we could get all huffy about how this really should be the game where the Spurs face elimination, rather than the Suns, because David Stern is an out-of-control megalomaniac who abuses his power by sticking to the letter of the law.

Or we could let cooler heads prevail and think calmer, more rational thoughts, like the ones below:

* Once again, David Aldridge, now of the Philly Inquirer and (very unfortunately) formerly of ESPN, injects knowledge and common sense into things. I needed support for my views about the suspensions from the Game 4 scuffle, and here comes D.A. to the rescue. To wit: "The NBA doesn't have all these anti-fighting rules in place so that it can penalize one of its most appealing teams at the worst possible moment. It has these rules in place because many in Middle America and on Madison Avenue have turned their backs on the game and trashed it every chance they got, and it would be economic suicide to give them any more ammo in the form of another bench-clearer. You want to blame somebody? Look in the mirror.''

* It's all a moot point now, anyway, and now you ask not how the Suns are going to survive tonight, but how did they come so close to winning Game 5? Granted, if you only take the last two minutes and insert Amare Stoudemire then, they would surely have won; they almost definitely would've gotten a better shot at the end than Steve Nash's three with Tim Duncan all over him. In fact, the possession before that (after Bruce Bowen's big three-pointer), Shawn Marion had a wide-open three-pointer and rushed it; he makes that shot pretty regularly. So all the hand-wringing over the competitive imbalance was kind of a waste; it's not as if the Suns were completely incapable of competing for one game without their big man. More reason for him to have kept his behind on the bench that night. And more reason to just watch the game instead of playing it in your head for 48 hours in advance.

* More proof that the whiners didn't know what they were talking about: there were so many comparisons between Stoudemire and Diaw's scoring averages and Robert Horry's, thus concluding that a scrub was sacrificed to knock out two more valuable players. Does anyone actually watch these games? Do they know what value Horry has to the Spurs, and how much they'll wish they had him tonight? If he only scores three points in a game and it happens to be the game-winning three (it's merely his career trademark, you know, the whole Big-Shot Rob thing), how does that make him a scrub? And has anyone heard of a thing called low-post defense? Sheesh.

* Not done yet: now that the visiting team has won three of the five games in this series, we can probably hold off on waving the Spurs into the conference final just because they're at home. Come to think of it, the Suns have lost only one time when they were at full strength, and just barely both times; Game 1 was the day Steve Nash was gushing blood for the final two minutes, and then there was Game 5.

* One thing we are certain of: the Spurs are, in fact, dirty. Everyone might as well stop denying it.

* I offer the usual suggestion to those struggling to make it to the end of the late game: nap during the first game. The Nets scored six points in the fourth quarter of Game 5 and still beat Cleveland, in Cleveland. What do you think you'll miss tonight? Speaking of which, would you all be yelping like a bike had run over your foot if Eddie House and Antoine Wright had left the Nets' bench after a flagrant foul? Would you be talking about integrity and the letter of the law and interfering with the quality of the series then? (We won't even get into the Stephen Jackson-Ron Artest comparison.)

* Even at this relatively early stage of his career, playoff games featuring LeBron James should be much more enticing to watch than they have been so far. What is the problem? Part of it's him, part of it's the team around him, part of it's the style, part of it's the level of competition. But this is awful to watch. The possible East final between the Cavs and Detroit will be brutal.

* On that topic, something smells funny in Detroit, too. They can't afford to get bored and blow off two games the way they did against Chicago in the last round, at least not if they want to win it all. How bad a reflection of the conference is it when the Pistons can lay down twice in the semifinals and not pay for it?

OK, forget the cooler-heads-prevailing thing. I do feel better now, though, just for letting that out.