Losing...now with added excitement in every box

It's funny: Before last week's Allen Iverson trade, the Sixers would have lost that game last night to Denver by 10 points, in a two-thirds-empty, utterly lifeless building, with no one watching on TV and with a tiny story in the back of the paper.

Instead, they had a packed house of 20,000 manaics screaming A.I.'s every move to the basket like he was all four '64 Beatles rolled into one....and they lost to Denver by 10 points.

But it was an exciting 10-point loss!

I'm only half-kidding -- in the short term it does feel oddly better for your team to lose with a little electricity. I'm still worried that AI's going to rob the team's young nucleus of too many minutes and too many shots, and we'll be paying the price with bad, AI-less basketball two or three years down the road, on top of the bad basketball with AI that we're going to get in '09-'10. Because going for the short-term pleasure can come back to bite you down the road. Isn't that right, Tiger?