Las Vegas doesn't like failure. Most of the big things we have tried here over the past 100 years or so have succeeded.

We built a giant dam and tamed a wild river. We exploded atomic bombs above and below the ground and helped win the Cold War. We built gambling resorts on the highway out of town and it became the Strip, one of the world's biggest tourist attractions. We opened large convention halls, and the conventioneers came in bunches. We hired a controversial coach to run our little university's basketball program and he delivered a national championship.

In conversation outside the realms of publicity and good manners, we admit that losers fuel our economy. But we particularly admire those few who go home with more money in their pockets than when they came. We like winners.

And that's why it stings us when ambitious ventures here show poor results (the monorail comes to mind). It bruises us in the deep tissue to see Las Vegas unable to conquer a new challenge. The same can be said of our university's football team last year. Its failures led us not to hang in there and support the home team, but to shun the games with a sense that if we can't be the best, then let's pretend it's not happening.

This collective Darwinian sense of survival of the fittest should give us greater pause amid recent fevered public discussions about bringing a major professional sports team to Las Vegas.

We don't have the right mind-set for it.

The Las Vegas metropolitan population has reached 2 million now, and that's typically enough to have a team in most pro leagues. We feel like a big city now, and so it's understandable that we'd want a status symbol to show our urban brethren that we've arrived in the big time.

But Las Vegas is different from other places. This is a gathering place of people from all across the country and the world. We are not a community in the traditional sense. We are 2 million individuals occupying a relatively flat spot between mountain ranges.

That's a whole different dynamic than you see in Boston, where the sense of community is palpable and is reflected in widespread, die-hard support for the Red Sox -- win or lose. It's different from Wisconsin (my place of origin), where the entire state holds its breath when a defensive end plows into Packers quarterback Brett Favre.

We don't have that here. And it's OK.

Las Vegas is what it is. That's a virtue of ours -- we accept, embrace and make the most of our uniqueness. In most cases, we don't feel the urge to follow the pack, to be like everybody else. This has its pitfalls, to be sure, but at least we are comfortable in our own green-felt skin.

But this push for a pro sports team suggests an inferiority complex lurking behind our mask of confidence. It suggests that we do, in fact, feel a need to fit in, to be treated as an equal with other cities.

It's a natural impulse, but we should resist it, at least for a few more years. Because if we don't, we are setting ourselves up for a fall.

The scenario is frighteningly vivid in my head. We convince a professional basketball franchise to move here, and stop taking NBA bets in the process. We build a big arena with all the latest bells and whistles. We excitedly sell out the first game. Celebrities and high-rollers sit on the sideline next to the players.

The team loses. Well, no problem, you can't win 'em all.

But then the team loses again. And again. The celebrity seats go vacant. We're assured it's a rebuilding year, encouraged to hang in there with the home team.

Las Vegas is not amused. We don't like losers.

The fancy arena is half-empty for most of the season. The owners are losing money. The players are looking for a new place to showcase their talents.

A second mediocre season. Attendance dives. The team bolts -- to a city where it believes it will be loved regardless of its winning percentage.

We don't need this. We don't need the financial or public relations cost of this all-too-plausible scenario.

With all due respect, Mayor Oscar Goodman is wrong. Las Vegas does not need a pro sports franchise to be a world-class city. Las Vegas is already a world-class city in its own way.

Nobody on Earth can equal the fantasy vacation experience this city offers: the gambling, the shows, the restaurants and clubs, the sheer spectacle. Gambling is legal now in many places, yet all gamblers eventually come to Las Vegas to taste the real thing.

And a key part of that experience, by the way, involves sports. Tens of thousands come here every year on Super Bowl weekend, not to see the game in person, obviously, but to bet on it, and to enjoy the great party this city puts on to enhance the viewing experience.

We should be pleased by our success in turning the Super Bowl into a Las Vegas experience, just as we have made our city a popular destination for New Year's Eve, Chinese New Year, auto races and, of all things, furniture trade shows.

Winning with these ventures is a stone-cold, cinch-pipe lock. Finding success with a professional sports franchise is a bad bet.

At least for now. One day, Las Vegas may evolve into a community that is ready to support a pro franchise through good times and bad. We're just not there yet.

Geoff Schumacher (gschumacher@reviewjournal.com) is Stephens Media's director of community publications. He is the author of "Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas." His column appears Sunday.