Rebuilding isn't very fun.

Watching a game like that — and knowing there are 81 more which might not get much better — made me appreciate the brilliant rationality bandwagon fans boast. I mean, they don't sit through the hydra of mediocrity. They don't watch a game in which the second most well-run Sacramento fast break consisted of Shareef Abdur-Rahim and Mikki Moore. They avoid the mindaches that come with 2-1/2 hour parades of talent inequity and plain ugly basketball.

And just sticking with a team in its downswing isn't enough. What use is following a destitute franchise if you ignore the atrocious and overinflate the glimmers? It's not truth, creating a false reality about your favorite players or overlooking serious, serious concerns in even the surest things in the franchise's otherwise barren future. We could pound our gavels and say, "But Quincy Douby looked good before Tyson Chandler knocked his ass out!" The Kings were outscored by 10 during the 9-1/2 minutes Quincy Douby was on the floor. "John Salmons was unstoppable!" John Salmons played 45 minutes of isolation basketball and no defense. (In fairness, the team defense wasn't really the problem — it was the offense. 90 points in roughly 95 possessions is the definition of disaster.)

We have to watch it all, we have to 'suffer' through the dry times or we can't really enjoy the high times. Would 2002 have been as sweet without Duane Causwell and Lionel Simmons? No, of course not. Who knows when our 2002 will come again; in the mean time, being not cheerleaders nor warm-weather fans, we'll just document the horror, like a less important Anne Frank or Spike Lee.

And if you thought this was ugly, there are two teams in Texas licking their chops you should not want to meet.