It has been a long month in 'Sota, Lakerland, Philly and, yes, Gotham.

A l-o-n-g month.

I understand that better than ever after the first season of my own life in which the draft lottery took on the magnitude of a Super Bowl.

Thanks to my beloved Buffalo Sabres and their own 2014-15 Tankapalooza, I have a whole new appreciation for what it's like to watch a team you love like family suddenly slog through an interminably horrendous season, mortified by the depths of your squad's punchlessness but also knowing, deep down, that losing is the best thing for the long-term health of the franchise.

How Wolves, Lakers, Sixers and Knicks fans felt on a Tuesday night of high apprehension and drama, waiting to see who would land the coveted No. 1 overall pick in the June 2015 NBA draft ... that was me on April 18.

The night that Buffalonians found out Jack Eichel -- seen in his sport as more of a fortune-changer than any of the NBA's top prospects -- was bound for western New York.

It took my Sabres until the second-to-last night of the NHL regular season to clinch the league's worst record, which guaranteed no worse than a top-two selection as opposed to a potential NBA-style slip all the way down to No. 4. The other advantage I had‎, compared to the hoop lovers whose teams were praying for the lottery magic that just went the Timberwolves' way, is that the NHL holds its lotto proceedings within a week of game No. 82. The NBA regular season, by contrast, ended 34 days ago.

Which meant 34 days of extra agony, of waiting nervously, for devotees of the Wolves, Knicks, Sixers, Lakers, etc., banking on draft-night salvation.

Another month and change to stare at the ceiling at night, bracing for the most nightmarish lottery scenario possible after all that losing thanks to all those unhelpful voices inside your head.

I have to confess that, until living through all this myself, I hadn't given sufficient thought to what the ordeal is like for fans of teams whose whole seasons are graded based on how the pingpong balls land. This Sabres season, though, gave me some needed perspective.

Leading up to an NHL draft stocked with the LeBron-esque Connor McDavid as a consensus No. 1 pick and an almost-as-coveted No. 2 option in Eichel, finishing with even the second-worst record in the league would have been disastrous for the Sabres, since it would have exposed them to slipping out of the top two.

And that made the last month-plus of the season impossible for Sabres fans to know how to behave.

There is no greater sin in sports fandom than rooting against your own team ... but what are you supposed to do when your team is playing so dang hard and flirting with just enough success to blow that shot at the next LeBron or Sid The Kid?

I suspect it's a question Sixers fans asked themselves often in February, March and April.

March 23, especially, is the date I won't soon forget. The Sabres came to Dallas that night for a game that will be recorded in the Nostalgic Sports Geek Archives we meticulously curate at Stein Line HQ as the most complicated sporting event I've ever watched live.

Buffalo took the lead three times with yours truly sitting there utterly conflicted in the stands. After each of the three goals, I sat there numb. I simply didn't know what to do. Openly rooting for the Stars was never an option, but I also couldn't bring myself to enjoy any of those leads, knowing a road win that late in the season would be catastrophic in terms of potential lottery position.

The Sabres ultimately absorbed a valuable 4-3 defeat that had me thinking I was actually watching the Sixers. Buffalo's no-names played incredibly hard for the since-ousted Ted Nolan -- just like Philly's overmatched kids always seem to for Brett Brown -- but there simply wasn't enough talent on the ice ‎to secure the W.

Just like management drew it up.

No joke: I don't think the feelings that rumbled inside me at American Airlines Center will ever quite fade. During intermissions, other Sabres fans in the house were wandering up to me, spotting me in my Gil Perreault-era Buffalo gear and looking for whispered reassurance that it was OK to be secretly wishing for an L.

I walked out of there promising myself to show a little more compassion in the future to my NBA counterparts going through similar inner torment, at a time in pro sports when the debate about merits and ills of so-called tanking has become so prevalent.

I've long believed that the NBA lottery system actually punishes teams presumed to be tanking far better than its reputation suggests, since the team with the worst overall record has only a 25 percent shot at the No. 1 overall pick and so rarely gets it. The Timberwolves, remember, are just the fourth lottery favorite over the past 22 years to be, uh, rewarded for finishing 30th out of 30 teams.

Meanwhile ...

The faction so rarely accounted for in the whole tanking discourse -- which, as my Bleacher Report colleague Howard Beck so expertly explained late in the 2013-14 season, is so confusing to properly pinpoint what we're arguing about -- is the public.

The fans.

The toll it takes on them trying to learn how to re-wire the sporting brain and adapt to the concept of losses as good news.

There's no manual for that sort of fandom. So the pledge here, going forward, is to show a little more empathy to those who find themselves riding (or dying) on the fickle nature of lottery fate to make their year.

The Sabres and their fans were subjected to plenty of noise after they wound up with the No. 2 overall pick last month, with no shortage of rival fans suggesting that karma actually punished hockey's most blatant tankers ‎and stuck them with the consolation prize (Eichel) as opposed to the true franchise-changer (McDavid).

Fine. Such barbs bounce right off me now. There were surely nights late in the season that handfuls of confused First Niagara Center goers didn't exactly cover themselves in glory with the way they seemingly abandoned the home team, but now I know it first-hand:

It's ridiculously easy to say, think and tweet things that you'll deeply regret later, even about your beloveds, when the championship after such protracted and unnatural suffering comes when your team's envelope is the last one they rip open.