The genie, you might have noticed, is Allen Iverson, barely 6-foot, the NBA's defending scoring champion, a first-team all-league selection.

This time - about eight hours before the Sixers' dramatic, 122-121 overtime victory over Detroit - it required a meeting that lasted roughly 90 minutes among Iverson, coach Larry Brown, president Pat Croce, general manager Billy King and assistant coach Randy Ayers.

Iverson said that he had made a mistake, that he never should have mentioned the word "trade" during Saturday night's blowup. Brown said it was "a great meeting." Croce gave it a thumbs up. Hopefully for them, they all meant it.

"We had a great ending to a necessary meeting," said Croce, who spent 45 minutes on the phone with Iverson Sunday night and also had a long conversation with Brown. "Obviously, any relationship is an ongoing process, but the resolution of this meeting was fabulous, better than I had anticipated.

"This was very candid, with passion behind the words."

According to a team source, there was equal passion a few weeks ago, on Nov. 30, when Brown and Iverson had words after a victory over New York at the First Union Center. The next day, the source said, Iverson called Brown to apologize, at which time Brown said perhaps he needed to resign. Iverson said he didn't want that to happen.

"As far as I know, Larry Brown did not express any intent of resigning [to the organization]," King said. "Our meeting [yesterday] brought the whole organization a lot closer. Anything Larry had been feeling had nothing to do with anything that happened this weekend."

But for this meeting to have any lasting effect, they all must do a lot more.

Iverson must get more serious about upholding his portion of the responsibility, even where he parks his car during practice.

Sam Steinberg, the executive vice president of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, the Sixers' practice site, said he was aware of one instance in which Iverson left his car in a handicapped space.

"We asked him to move and he did, that's as much as I know," Steinberg replied when asked. "But that happens all the time, people parking illegally. I usually never know about [the instances]. I guess because it was him, they mentioned it. There are plenty of illegal places to park on campus, and once or twice a year we have to tell somebody to move. A handicapped spot is a little more urgent, but 99 times out of 100, when we ask people to move, they do. It's not a capital crime in this country."

There was, however, a day when Croce saw Iverson's car in a handicapped spot and told his star to move it.

"I said, 'I hope to God you never have an injury where you have to use that spot,' " Croce said. "Sometimes he doesn't know things until people tell him. Maybe he's looking for someone to tell him."

When Iverson missed 10 games because of a fractured right thumb, he could have come to practice and shootarounds. Instead of complaining that Iverson wasn't always there - and, at the same time, saying the sessions went better in Iverson's absence - Brown could have demanded attendance. Instead of having to be the mediator and motivator, Croce could have told Iverson and Brown to resolve their differences earlier.

But even Iverson knows that Croce's thumbs up is only good until the next blowup.

This one came out of last Saturday night's 104-91 loss to Detroit in Auburn Hills, Mich. Down 23 points early in the third quarter, Brown benched his starters and watched the second unit climb within seven. Iverson reacted furiously, saying that he needed to meet "with somebody that matters," that he never had sat out an entire half (it was 20 minutes, 15 seconds of the 24 minutes), that if the team didn't like his style or if his style didn't fit its concept, he wanted to be traded.

"It was just another meeting that we've had, just like any other meeting, but this was one that we needed," Iverson said. "We got a lot of things cleared up. It was kind of hostile at the beginning, but that's what we needed.

". . .I look at [the incident] as something that should never have happened, but it happened. . .I don't want to go anywhere, but what happened at the game never happened to me before. You know me, I get upset when I get taken out of the game [for] two minutes. But 20 minutes, I kind of got upset and said some things that I really didn't mean, things that hopefully won't come back to haunt me.

"I made a mistake. . .We're going to get in another spat. There's going to be times we're going to get in another argument and we're going to have another falling out. But the wrong word was said when I mentioned 'trade,' because that's the last thing I want. I always said that I was around when we got our butt kicked, and I want to be around when we turn everything around.

"That was the main reason for me to sign this [$70.9 million, six-year] contract. I want to finish my career in Philadelphia. Regardless if anybody likes it or not, I'm going to be here. This is where I want to be. This is where I want my kids. This is where I want my family. I'm going to be here. It was just a mistake on my part."

Brown said the meeting "helped me a lot to understand why he felt the way he did, and hopefully he understands what I'm about. We'll go from there.

"I guess he felt by not playing him, I was disrespecting him," Brown said. "I think he probably felt I was pointing a finger at him. I feel bad about that, because that wasn't the intention.

". . .The situation with me and Allen is resolved. We're going to work it out. It's going to work out for him and it's going to work out for me. . .I really understand what he's about now a lot more than I ever have before. All the things he really wants, I want. We go about it in different ways, but if you don't talk about it, you don't resolve it."

Iverson said it was partly the lack of talk that disturbed him.

"I was upset after the game and said some things I shouldn't have said to [reporters]," Iverson said. "If I had said it to my teammates and the coaching staff, I think it would have been cool. By involving [reporters] in it, I went back on something that I said I always strongly believed in."

When Brown pulled the starters, Iverson was the only one to challenge the decision, the only one who wanted an explanation.

"Maybe they didn't ask, maybe they didn't want [an explanation]," Iverson said. "I did. I feel like I'm the best player in the league; he sat me down for 20 minutes, I wanted to know why.

"The only problem I really had was, nobody said anything as to why I didn't get a chance to come back. Not in the locker room, on the bus, on the plane, when we got off the plane. Just tell me anything. I felt I deserved that much. I'm the last Sixer here from when I came [in 1996]. I wanted an explanation.

"I felt like a little 10-year-old kid put on punishment Christmas Day with no toys. Maybe I reacted the wrong way, but if it ever happens again, I've got experience in how to handle it.

". . .I just want the whole thing to be over. It's been like a bad nightmare, like a rewind of life back to when we were losing."

It is, at least for the moment, over.

"This needed to be done," Brown said. "This was good. I missed [yesterday's shootaround], the first time in my life."