NEW YORK — What better time to dramatize then after the first games of the first series of an inexorable playoff season? Beginning with the Spurs-Suns showdown. . .

After witnessing the closing minutes of its Game 1 mental meltdown on Saturday at the Alamo, I had more respect for Phoenix a season ago when Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw tip-toed onto the tarmac and wound up in suspended animation.

How many boneheaded botch-ups can one team have before the coach is called on the carpet? How many uncontested, game-tying 3-pointers must be amassed before it dawns on Mike D'Antoni he might want to foul before an opponent is in the act of shooting?

I know damn well D'Antoni didn't learn such compliance while playing and coaching in Italy. Fail to foul once in a critical situation over there and it'll be your last decision on the sidelines.

The Suns royally screwed up twice, at the end of regulation (Stoudemire thoughtlessly dropped back into 2-point territory — to stop what exactly — rather than push past Fabricio Oberto's screen and challenge Finley's three) and at the end of the first overtime.

Throw in an inexcusable 24-second violation (How could 2-time MVP Steve Nash not be aware time was ticking down?), and second-chance opportunities by the Spurs, an obscenely obtuse charge by Stoudemire and the Suns, up a Sweet 16 in the second stanza, earned their fate.

The fact that the second trey was Tim Duncan's first of the season off an everyday Spurs play, where Manu Ginobili bursts to the basket and then dishes to the perimeter, made it even more appalling.

Knicks fans, for example, caught a dose of the exact sequence at the Garden this season when Michael Finley buried a corner springer to extend matters to OT. A week or two before, the Spurs pulled the identical stunt with the same success.

Even if the Suns' entire coaching and scouting staff never had gotten a glimpse of that sucker play, you would hope someone would be savvy enough to grasp the pointless implication of hawking the ball handler into the paint with the game clock dwindling down to mere seconds and San Antonio dead in the River Walk unless its last pull card was a trifecta.

You would think the two-time MVP would have conquered that concept in an earlier episode of his career. Yet Nash dutifully tracked Ginobili across the arc, down the lane and then did an expert job of boxing him out . . . while Shaquille O'Neal deserted Duncan up top to play follow his leader to double team Ginobili, guard the goal, whatever; who knows what was on his mind? And where, oh where, was the rotating Leandro Barbosa?

At the risk of repeating myself and hitting the century mark, I'm waiting for just one coach, any coach, at any level (this hardly applies to just John Calipari) in a similar situation to order his orderlies to stand a body width above the 3-point border, not so much as look inside, and immediately foul the receiver.

That's it. I'm officially gaseous.

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NOT ONLY DID referee Tony Brothers get stone fooled by Utah forward Andrei Kirilenko's baseline flop away from the ball in the series opener (calling the foul on Luis Scola, whose right arm was extended yet never moved backward) but Doug Collins bought the swindle as well. Four hundred or 500 more games and the TNT analyst should have a feel for the game. It's depressing that the second outcome in Utah's favor had to be determined by such incompetence as it erased Bobby Jackson's game-tying (85-85) three. Kirilenko scored but three points.

Meanwhile, that Oscar-winning performance and the very next possession — recovering Kyle Korver's lousy shot off the side of the backboard for his eighth rebound and returning it to him an instant before he beat the 24-second clock with his one and only field goal — interred the Rockets.

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I misunderstood, but when the Mavericks acquired Jason Kidd I thought he was supposed to be a game-changer for Dallas.

In the series opener, Chris Paul embarrassed Kidd so thoroughly Jimmy Jackson felt sorry for him.

Superiority shows. Paul found the perfect wave and rode it for 35 points, 10 assists, four steals and one turnover in a 40-minute, one-man ball-handling retrospective.

"Hey, I said going into this series that we weren't going to let Jannero Pargo beat us, and I'm comfortable with that strategy," Avery Johnson said.

I shall say this much for Kidd; he went 3-for-5 from the field, while four other starters were a combined 16-for-49. Nobody got more disrespected than Dirk Nowitzki who, during a one-way smack-talking, stare down with David West, allowed the Hornets forward to keep his fingers on his face for a few seconds without slapping them away.

Think the Mavs miss Desagana Diop's shot-blocking, defensive and quick feet; well, they're quicker than Eric Dampier's, aren't they? Especially when they're reacting to Tyson Chandler's jumping jacks for putbacks and aerial-oops.