NBA Playoffs Schedule Maker, a Mother's Day FAIL

Could have been the best Mother's Day match-up of all time.

​It's not easy for a sport's postseason that lasts practically as long as the entire college football regular season to be compelling from beginning to end, but so far this NBA postseason is doing as good a job of just that as it's ever done.

Bolstered by as much star power as the league has seen in a while and as deep a pool of teams "with a chance" as there has ever been, this year's postseason has had a "must see" feel from jump. Of the top five finishers in the MVP balloting, four are still alive with the possibility still in play that all four could be around for the conference finals (although Kobe Bryant needs to step it up posthaste if that's going to happen).

Times are good.

Still, as riveting as it has been, the postseason is not perfect. The schedule maker made sure of that this week.

You see, the "powers that be" took two of the four second-round series (Boston-Miami and Memphis-Oklahoma City) that played Game 2 on Tuesday night and decided that, presumably for the sake of television ("television friendliness" being roughly 98 percent of the decision criteria for the league), those two series would resume on Saturday.

Essentially, the league plunked a de facto All-Star break down in the middle of two playoff series that have been highly intriguing -- Memphis and Oklahoma City for its competitiveness and Boston and Miami for its vitriol. I half expected all four teams to gather at a neutral location on Thursday and conduct a slam-dunk contest, three-point shooting contest and a strip club melee.

Even worse, the other two series (Chicago-Atlanta and Dallas-Lakers) both played their last games on Wednesday night and play their respective Game 3's tonight. It makes no sense.

And while the spacing between games of all four series is utterly nonsensical, that is still not the most egregious scheduling transgression the schedule maker hath wrought upon the viewing (and blogging) public. No, the most glaring offense the league is guilty of centers around Sunday.

As anyone with a mother, mother-in-law, or a baby momma knows, this Sunday is Mother's Day. As anyone with an Internet connection and an RSS Feed knows, Delonte West quite possibly torpedoed Cleveland's entire postseason in 2010 when news broke that he ALLEGEDLY (consider that word to be in font size 72) was smashing his then-teammate LeBron James's mother Gloria.

West is now a member of the Boston Celtics and James is, famously, now a member of the South Beach Heat. Somehow, the chance to schedule these two to square off on Mother's Day evaded the schedule maker's sense of humor, denying us perhaps the most entertaining "wired up" matchup between two players of all-time.

Plug West in for Finch and LeBron in for Stiffler below...

Seriously, NBA, sometimes I just don't get you.

Listen to Sean Pendergast on 1560 The Game from noon to 3 p.m. and follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.