With precisely 7:45 remaining in the fourth quarter of Game 3, and the Mavericks already frantically pleading for a knee transplant donor to replace Dirk Nowitzki's badly sprained left one, NBA and TNT officials began filing out of the Western Conference playoff series.

Guess the rest of us can go home, too, at least until the Finals begin, because we all now know how this is gonna turn out - at least if Nowitzki doesn't return.

An MRI showed he sprained ligaments in the knee, but suffered no other damage. Nowitzki, definitely out for tonight's Game 4, could return later in the series (which the Spurs lead, 2-1) even though the typical recovery time for his injury is 10 days to two weeks.

If the defensively deficient, skate-boarding Mavs couldn't vaguely contain terminally efficient Tim Duncan (the league's overdue to revise its Top 50 list), or Tim Conway, for that matter, with their 6-11 franchise forward, imagine how helpless and hopeless they're bound to be minus Nowitzki.