When your team is near the bottom in the NBA, tomorrow is the best you can hope for today.

You've heard of do-or-die? Well, for the Sixers the next 3 weeks are more like do-and-die. Friday is Groundhog Day, which rather appropriately begins a seven-game homestand that has every Greg Oden-lusting-fan on edge.

There's no way around it. The Sixers are playing better basketball now than at any point since that 3-0 start this season. They have won four of their last six to slice their pingpong percentages by more than half, and it might have been even worse had they not blown that 17-point lead to the LeBron-less Cavs the other night.

They are now just eight games behind leader Toronto in the pitiful Atlantic Division. And that leads to this unnerving thought: Which is more likely to happen in the coming weeks - the Sixers challenge for the Atlantic lead and, egads, a playoff spot, or the Sixers outlose the likes of Memphis, Boston, Charlotte to secure the best chance at that No. 1 draft pick?

Not since fans were compelled to throw snowballs at Santa has success felt more like failure. Back then, tomorrow was a USC tailback named O.J. Simpson. This time, it's Oden, the 7-foot Ohio State freshman who is expected to be the top pick in this year's draft, and who might, like Shaq did, turn a bad team into a contender in a short amount of time.

So it made for a particularly queasy Saturday night, the Sixers beating the Atlanta Hawks on the road, Oden following with 19 points in a 66-64 victory over Michigan State. Still wearing a brace on the surgically repaired right wrist that kept him off the court until early December, Oden hit 11 of 14 free throws using his left, non-shooting hand.

"Even I forget his right hand hasn't been mobilized for 8 months," Ohio State coach Thad Matta said after Saturday's game.

After a uneven start to his delayed season, Oden's last few games have validated the fuss about him. On Jan. 13 he had 24 points and 15 rebounds against Tennessee. The next Saturday he scored 29 points against Iowa, and in the two games before Michigan State, he connected on 18 of 20 field-goal tries, pulled down 27 boards and scored 46 points.

He is averaging 15.6 points and 9.8 rebounds. His shot-blocking continues to improve. Oden, the Miami Heat's Alonzo Mourning told Sports Illustrated recently, "will be a great one. Just watching a couple games that he's played, I've seen him block dunks, and that's what I like to see. You have to have that mentality."

Said Matta: "Every day Greg gets a little bit better. I still don't think we've seen the best of Greg. Not that he's going to score more points or grab more rebounds. But he's getting more comfortable and confident, which is exciting for me."

Is it exciting to you? Or nerve-racking? Do you play the fox-and-grapes game that some shortsighted fans have, rationalizing their rooting by belittling the importance of acquiring Oden over the likes of Florida's Joakim Noah or Texas' Kevin Durant?

Or are you dying with every win, with every baby step Samuel Dalembert makes, with every big-point game Andre Iguodala records, with every three-pointer Kyle Korver so effortlessly drains? Imagine Oden and Dalembert together next year, with Iguodala and Korver? And yet each time one of the current Sixers does something of promise, the chance of that becomes less.

Every valiant comeback, every gritty performance, every example of someone playing beyond themselves, is like taking an icy snowball off your dome from point-blank range.

So no more heroics for a while, OK, boys? Feel free to lose those winnable games like Friday's game against Cleveland. No more fourth-quarter heroics, unless they end in a just-miss jumper. The division is just too bad to risk even a little bit of promise, especially with all those home games on the horizon.

The Sixers are 7-11 at home, by the way.

In any other place, at any other time, those might be looked upon as lucky numbers.

But not when the only number that matters is 1. *

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