Imagine there's a goal you desperately want to achieve. If you succeed in reaching an intermediate goal, your chance of achieving the end goal rises from 50% to 66%. If you fail at that intermediate goal, it falls to 34%. Is that intermediate goal "critically important"? Absolutely, definitely, 110%, according to ESPN's SportsCenter.

SportsCenter anchors used that term to describe Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals between the Heat and Pistons. The series was tied at one game apiece. Using a sample size that would make political pollsters blush, ESPN's number-crunchers concluded that when conference finalists have, in the past, split the first two of the best-of-seven series, the winner of Game 3 goes on to win the series 66% of the time. That's really not surprising. Assuming the teams are evenly matched, simple probability theory shows that the winner of Game 3 in that scenario should win 11 of 16 times, or 68.75% of the time.

The Heat won that critically important Game 3. Then they won Game 4 at home, and the Pistons responded by winning Game 5 at home. Dallas won Game 3 of its series, which presumably was just as important. Phoenix responded by routing Dallas in Game 4, and the percentage of teams tied at two games apiece who go on to win the series is, of course, 50%. So much for that critically important advantage.

None of this is critically important; it's merely an example of how hyperbole cheapens language. What would be a proper description of a Game 7, the only true must-win? "Mortally meaningful"?