For much of the match, the Fever looked like they had figured out how to beat the Aces at the latter’s own game. They played with pace, built a substantial lead, and forced the defending champions to spend most of the night chasing them. Unfortunately for them, basketball has a way of making a seemingly substantial lead feel insignificant when the set-to gets tighter and reaches its final possessions. For the Fever, the difficult part is not that they lost; the Aces are precisely the type of opponents against whom mistakes become magnified. Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994.