I have been at the American Airlines Center for coming up on two hours. It's a nice place. Really nice. There is Starbucks Coffee, for instance, in the media room. Everything is clean.

And people are nice, of course, this being the South and all. 

Even the guy in the uniform who was waiting at the door of the Mavericks' locker room to tell Andrew Kamenetzky of the Los Angeles Times, Tim McMahon of the Dallas Morning News, and myself that we are not allowed in the locker room.

So, as expected, the Mavericks, for tonight, are safe from the prying eyes of bloggers. My reaction hasn't changed.

I asked the PR staff as soon as I got here if I would be allowed in, so there were no surprises. But as it happened, I had to go through the same door later to talk to a Mavericks staffer. And a security guard took a look at my credential, and said, very nicely, "you know you're banned, right?"

I ended up having to loiter with the guard for a while as I got clearance to talk to said staffer. We talked a little. I had heard that before the game tonight they had to distribute lists with the names of the bloggers. And this poor dude was the one stuck with the embarrassing task of enforcing this goofy ban.

And as I was small talking to the guy, another staffer -- blogger alert! -- rushed over to ask the security guard if everything was OK.

It was.

The Laker locker room, however, is fair game for bloggers tonight. As, of course, is the Mavericks' locker room at any road game.

I still haven't met anybody who tells my they understand or believe Mark Cuban's explanation of how the blogger ban came to be. 

Everyone here expects the league will have the next move. It's their language on the back of the credential.

In the meantime, we have a first-class game to watch.