I'm not a huge fan of statistical figures and over-hyped analysis of integers. I guess you could say I'm more "old school" in that way. In my opinion, basketball is a fairly simple sport and making it too complicated usually doesn't equate to wins.

Don't get me wrong, there are stats that matter; I'm just not a big proponent of the more complicated ones as I believe they can be construed in multiple ways. As Mark Twain said, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

At Mercury shoot-around today, the very last one of the season, I found out the team and organization have a very similar outlook for their decisive game 5 against the Fever.

"You know, bottom line is it comes down to just another 40 minutes of basketball," Diana Taurasi said. "If we look at it that way then we have nothing to worry about."

As Dee said that, her tone of voice and body language was that of confidence and simplicity. In fact, as a Mercury fan, it was incredibly reassuring. It probably would be a mistake to add things into the game plan that they haven't worked on the entire year, and Gaines clearly wasn't going to confuse or burden the players with any additional things.

Hence, whoever wins tonight will do the following things better than the other team.

• Have more energy
• Better composure

It's really that simple.

Former Suns coach, Mike D'Antoni, used to say "the ball finds energy." How true! Energy leads to rebounds, better defense, improved focus on offense, and more shot attempts. Composure leads to an increased will power, determination, never panicking, and staying loose in a high pressure situation.

We all know how good the Fever can be on defense. We all know how fantastic the Mercury can be on offense. We all know how multiple players can step up for both teams and, essentially, be the key to a victory. But the winner tonight will be the team that lets the game come to them, and go all out for an entire 40 minutes.

That's it.

You could probably make a strong case for a plethora of statistical analyses that will "prove" which team is going to win or has the better chance of winning. You could say the Mercury have an advantage at home but you could also make a case for the Fever being the team with less pressure and expectations which would lead to a more free-flowing game for Indiana. Maybe you could try and compare offensive efficiency vs. defensive efficiency, turnovers forced, shooting percentage, rebounding percentage, offensive rating vs. defensive rating etc. But all of those figures stem from the team that out-hustles and out-energizes the other team, all while remaining composed in such a high profile game.

Though, it certainly doesn't hurt that Phoenix is playing at home. Interestingly enough, this series should become the most attended Finals series of all time, over 81,000 people attending the 5 games. The series will also have the highest average attendance (about 16,000) since the Finals went to 5 games.

"I'm expecting a dog fight," Cappie Pondexter said. "It's been a battle the whole series and I wouldn't be surprised if it was very close or went to overtime. At this point home-court doesn't really matter. We just have to come out with a lot of energy and use that to our advantage."

However, Cappie did acknowledge the significance of this game. "If I walk away with a championship tonight, it will be one of the top achievements ever."

Still, the winner of tonight's game isn't going to implement anything new to completely disorient the other team. They're not going to add new offensive schemes, or do anything different than what got them to this point. And this, more so than anything, makes tonight's game 5 so compelling and important.

Quite simply, it should be one for the books.