Amar'e Stoudemire.

When Amar’e Stoudemire took the stage after the screening of his new documentary, In The Moment, last Thursday night at Marquee, he genuinely seemed to appreciate the attention and applause that greeted him from the packed house of athletes, musicians, fashion designers and more than a few men in yarmulkes.

It was less than 24 hours after the New York Knicks had closed out their best regular season in 16 years (having captured the Atlantic Division crown and the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed), and a near-starting lineup, including Carmelo Anthony, Tyson Chandler, Iman Shumpert and Chris Copeland, had turned out to fete their oft-injured teammate—a rare bright spot in what has been yet another snake-bitten season for Mr. Stoudemire.

Not that he looked particularly unhealthy on this night. Mr. Stoudemire was red-carpet sharp in a fitted black sport coat, a camouflage bow tie and some sort of gold boutonnière—an ensemble he might have the chance to reprise in the coming weeks. (His latest setback, a knee debridement, has all but ensured that the six-time All Star will miss the team’s first-round matchup against the Boston Celtics.)

“Oh, we’re definitely going to get out of the first round,” Mr. Stoudemire said in a conversation with Stephen A. Smith following the film, which gives fans an intimate look at both his troubled family history—his father, Hazell, died when he was 12; his mother, Carrie, spent years in and out of prison; his older brother, Hazell Jr., was killed in a car wreck last year—and the former first-round pick’s journey from impoverished high school prodigy to Rookie of the Year to New York Knicks savior.

And lest fans forget—as many seem to have—that’s exactly what he was, signing with the organization in 2010 when other superstars, like LeBron James, snubbed the city’s bright lights for Miami’s sun-stroked beaches.

“I wanted to accept the challenge and revitalize a team that needed help,” Mr. Stoudemire recalled.

In his first season with the Knicks, the man known as “STAT” set a franchise mark with nine consecutive 30-point games while leading the team to its best start since the 1996-1997 season. He earned “M-V-P” chants from the Garden faithful. Vogue put him on its cover and called him a “basketball deity.” The New York Post wrote, “Carrie Stoudemire has given birth to New York’s basketball messiah.” (In the documentary, Ms. Stoudemire admits to having tried to abort her “billion-dollar baby.”)

Still, the high-flying forward was not immortal. Mr. Stoudemire matched a career high in minutes per game that first season, as then-Knicks head coach Mike D’Antoni demanded too much of the team’s fragile new superstar—a player whose contract was literally uninsurable. (Coach D’Antoni has come under similar criticism this season for overtaxing Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who recently ruptured his Achilles tendon.)

By the time the Knicks shipped nearly half their roster to Denver in exchange for Carmelo Anthony, the team was relevant again, but the minutes had added up. Injuries returned, and the spotlight instantly shifted from Amar’e to Melo.

Last May, when Mr. Stoudemire injured himself for the second straight postseason, the goodwill was all but gone. ESPN New York columnist Ian O’Connor wrote of Mr. Stoudemire, “He should be thanked for the pre-Melo memories, and sent on his way.” And in the months that followed, the Knicks reportedly shopped him to every team in the league, making him “available for free.”

The business of sports can of course be heartless, but such treatment seemed especially cold. This, after all, was the man who signed with the Knicks when no one else would, who once again validated New York as a destination for star players after so many failed arrivals, who gave his heart and soul—and yes, his knees—to a city so that its team could thrive.

And thrive it has ... even without him. Carmelo Anthony is playing MVP-caliber basketball, and the Knicks are poised for their first legitimate playoff run since 2000. But Mr. Stoudemire is not bitter. He continues to train hard. When healthy, he has embraced a role off the bench (his style of play and Melo’s were never meant to mesh). And unlike the city whose team he saved, he remains grateful—because he remembers what those lean years growing up were like.

“The thanks is always there,” he said. “Even if you’re in hard times, as I am now with the injury, I still give thanks. And it helps. What food is to the body, prayer is to the soul.”

And as a Knicks fan who remembers those lean years of Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury, the Transom says: amen.

While you're at it, pity poor Larry Brown, and poor Lenny Wilkens, and poor Don Chaney, and poor Jeff Van Gundy. 

Isiah Thomas, who lead the Knicks to basketball hell (and tabloid newspaper glory) before D'Antoni came aboard in 2008, however, will never, ever deserve any of your pity.

These poor souls (once again, save for Zeke, that swine) have had to deal with an ever-changing roster of has-beens and never-will-bes, a fanbase and a media base that would praise you just as fast as they would tear you from limb to limb, and an owner who is, well, just the absolute worst.

That is, James Dolan, the "swaggering" vocalist of JD & The Straight Shot, head of Cablevision (his father Charles Dolan hired him for the position) and the miserable-looking fellow who can be found sitting  courtside at Madison Square Garden, appearing as though he is waiting for his turn to tell his sobriety group how his week went. This is the man who calls the shots in the supposed "Mecca" of basketball.

For the past ten years, those shots have been really, truly, absolutely shitty.

He has brought in head coaches with Hall of Fame pedigrees and New York City roots:  Lenny Wilkens,  the pride of Bedford Stuy and the one-time winningnest coach in the NBA's history (Don Nelson, another former Knick coach, now has that title), and Larry Brown, another Brooklyn-born Hall of Famer who is widely considered one of the all-time great basketball minds.

Both men came with great fanfare, expected to turn around a sputtering franchise that never seemed to regain its swagger since losing to the Indiana Pacers in the 2000 Eastern Conference finals.

Both men left in what has become a familiar exit: fired midseason and with a losing record (Knicks were 17-22 at the time of Wilkens' firing, and 23-59 when Brown was tossed).

So surely Mr. D'Antoni, the offensive guru who turned Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns into one of the most exciting offenses in the past decade, knew what he was getting himself into when he signed a 4-year, $24 million deal to coach the Knicks?

For in Dolan's world, having a revolutionary offensive system means bubkes in the scheme of things. In Phoenix, Mr. D'Antoni had a mainstay at the point guard position. In New York, he had Stephon Marbury and Nate Robinson and Jamal Crawford and Chris Duhon and Toney Douglas and Sergio Rodriguez and Raymond Felton and Chauncey Billups.

Then a miracle happened.

Jeremy Lin, the Harvard-educated scrub who was called up as a bench fill-in, eventually became that mainstay the offensive guru so desperately needed to survive in this town.

And for a brief, rapturous run, Mr. Lin and the Knicks did the unthinkable: They won, they became likable, and they were actually fun to watch (at least, only after Mr. Dolan and co. finally resolved their dispute with Time Warner Cable in February and New Yorkers could, you know, watch their hometown team on TV).  They won while Carmelo Anthony, the marquee player who Dolan overturned a promising roster for (say what you will, but Felton-Fields-Gallo-Stoudemire-Mozgov had character), sat out.

But then Anthony returned, he largely played his own style of basketball instead of D'Antoni's, and the Knicks lost. A lot.

Then yesterday, amid growing reports that the Anthony-D'Antoni rift was destroying all the goodwill  that "Linsanity" had built up, Mr. D'Antoni resigned.

Like his predecessors, he left with a losing record (121-167 overall record) and a lot of money. He also left amid reports that he had argued with Dolan about trading Anthony for New Jersey Nets point guard Deron Williams, a move that made some basketball sense.

"Basketball sense" has never really mattered to Dolan. There are more important matters afoot.

Madison Square Garden is currently transforming itself from the "World's Most Famous Arena® " into a state-of-the-art arena, reportedly at a cost of $850 million. In Dolan's mindset, having a balanced basketball roster (which wins) is not going to pay for the Garden's facelift. Stars like Anthony will. He hiked the average price of a ticket by 49 percent after he traded for Anthony in 2011, and raised it again by 4.9 percent last week. 

But the gloom surrounding D'Antoni's departure was short-lived. With newly-installed head coach Mike Woodson at the helm, the Knicks throttled a listless Portland Trailblazers team and D'Antoni, the mustachioed maverick, was an afterthought.  Stoudemire even slagged off his former Suns and Knicks coach by saying that "everyone wasn't buying into his system."

And why should they? There is no such thing as a system in the Dolan-owned Knicks. It's not about winning basketball games. It's about hiring coaches and bringing in players whose basketball pedigrees and New York City roots lure our sorry asses into the Garden. Marbury of Coney Island, Anthony of Red Hook (but really of Baltimore), Wilkins and Brown of Brooklyn... it works. We buy into the idea that a NYC-native will save this woeful franchise.  (Everyone was wrong: A California native turned out to be our team's savior).

So, the next question is: Why root for the Knicks? Why buy a Knicks t-shirt with, say, Timofey Mozgov's name on it if the fella is just going to end up getting traded the next day?(Editorial note: That happened to me) Why root for Dolan, who refuses to speak to the press (save for a brief statement yesterday), jacks up our ticket prices and laughs all the way to the bank while we read the Daily News and groan?

Because it's basketball. And because we still have Lin... unless Lin, like his old coach, gets the eff out of this circus.

drosen@observer.com 

Tonight, Will Ferrell is expected to be in attendance to watch the Blake-Djokovic match. Giants QB Eli Manning will be here, as will a Baldwin! (Stephen). And amazingly, somehow, former Knicks head coach Isiah Thomas who oversaw the bleakest days in franchise history is going to be here tonight. Can't wait for the reaction from the crowd if they put him on the Jumbotron.

Last night, the Post caught Chelsea Clinton and her new hubby, Marc Mezvinsky, kissing. Here's a photo gallery.

As you can see from today's frontpage, the story on Isiah Thomas by Andrea Peyser suggests that the former Knicks coach is getting some sort of arid land.

Of course, typos happen all the time, so perhaps we shouldn't be so huffy (see third Breaking News item).

Update, 4:15 P.M.: The third item on the Post's homepage has changed. Also, per the comment below, it looks like The Post was in the right and our grasp of idioms isn't as firm as we thought.

See Snopes' explanation and Wise Geek's take on this common mistake.

As The Post might say, we regret the error.

"I was going to delve very deeply into the issue of why a building was built that caused the crane collapse, without proper permits,” Bing says.

Either way, Lancaster had to go, Bing thinks. “I think she became the Isiah Thomas of city government," he said. "And, really, regardless of her sincerity and interest in doing a good job, it was a necessary step.”

Bing is sponsoring, along with Republican State Senator Andrew Lanza, a bill which would penalize building inspectors who file false information.

Overseeing the Building’s Department now is Robert LiMandri, first deputy buildings commissioner, who has agreed to stay on until a replacement is named.

Only time will tell, however. It is the Knicks, after all...

Fortunately, the team has nowhere to go but up, and the fan base’s wish list is likely smaller than it has ever been. No demands for a championship. Basketball that is merely watchable will be a cause for celebration.

Walsh brings an undeniable record of success with him—while Indiana has not won an NBA title, the Pacers have been to the playoffs all but two seasons with Walsh in the front office since 1989-90.

He starts with one strike against him, however: it was Walsh who gave Isiah Thomas the head coaching gig in Indiana back in 2000.

That said, there’s a pretty simple checklist Walsh can follow to turn the Knicks around.

Fire Isiah

It is fair to wonder if Isiah Thomas knows that each time he discusses his job, he sounds like a horror-movie villain—and that his Knicks are the horror show.

"If there's one thing you can be sure of, I'll never quit and I'll keep coming back,” Thomas told the Bergen Record Monday. "You've got to kill me because I'm never stopping."

Unfortunately, that determination simply doesn’t translate in any form to the players Isiah coaches. Most of the roster displays an aversion to defensive effort. Offensive plays are haphazardly run—the Knicks are comically inept on plays run out of a timeout, just seconds after Isiah has drawn something up. And even those players handpicked by Thomas can’t get along with him (see Marbury, Stephon). It’s hard to believe new personnel will like him more.

Also: a new coach is unlikely to cost the franchise more than $11 million due to sexual harassment.

No one epitomizes the culture of losing in New York more than Thomas. And if Walsh keeps Thomas on, it is a tacit endorsement for part of the unbearable basketball played at Madison Square Garden since the end of the Patrick Ewing era.

Rebuild, Don’t Retool

The great irony of the current mess is that it stemmed from a belief that New York fans would not tolerate rebuilding. It isn’t clear where this idea came from, but in a league with a salary cap, using this as a guiding principle has led to disaster upon disaster. No other team needed to fear bestowing a long-term contract on a potential problem—after all, when that player wore out his welcome, he could just be dumped on the Knicks.

Allowing large contracts to expire, or be dealt in their final year for draft picks, is the most direct path to making the Knicks younger and able to dip below the salary cap. No longer will New York be trading from a position of weakness. In fact, should the draft lottery go New York’s way this year, the team could be in position to add a young star worth building around, such as Memphis guard Derrick Rose.

Keep David Lee—at the right price

The one player who has managed to earn the affection of New York is Lee, whose rebounding and intensity seemed to clash with the other Knicks’ pursuits. Of course, Lee was promptly benched this season when Zach Randolph became available. The Knicks preferred to go with Eddy Curry in the lineup, whose aversion to rebounding suggests to a basketball phobia.

But with Lee hitting free agency this year, it will be important not to throw anything approaching max-contract money at Lee. He is a very good player, but he is not someone to build a franchise around. Pay too much for Lee now, and getting a free agent like LeBron James is 2010 may become impossible.

Clean House

Everyone else needs to go. This doesn’t need to be done tomorrow, though some players are so poisonous that they should be paid to stay away from the team, then dealt when their contract reaches its final year. (See once again Marbury, Stephon.) Others, like Curry, could have value to a team that needs low-post scoring, but has other players who play defense and rebound. Do not be afraid to deal Curry for draft picks. Same with Jamal Crawford, a good seventh man on a championship team who is the overpaid scoring leader for the Knicks.

But don’t deal them for other veteran problems. Knicks fans will trade big names for even minimal effort. And please, end the Isiah Thomas era, before he kills again.

They were attempting to interview the Knicks’ religiously evasive head coach Isiah Thomas, who informed them, after a contentious exchange, that they indeed had the right to criticize the team.

Afterward, the reporters complained about what they viewed as a patronizing lecture. One called him a “psycho.” It was, in all respects, a typically bitter start to a day in the life of a New York Knicks beat reporter.

Not that it was always like this. After all, covering the Knicks was once one of the most coveted beats in the country.

“It’s Madison Square Garden, it’s New York City, it should be one of the top beats in New York,” said Newsday beat reporter Alan Hahn.

Instead: “It’s maddening. What it should be and what it is—it’s a shame.”

Frank Isola, the 12-year Knicks-beat veteran for the Daily News, said, “It used to be fun here. Now, there are some nights when you’re trying to talk your boss out of sending you here and maybe lie and tell him you’re sick or something.”

“I’ll admit,” said Howard Beck, the New York Times Knicks reporter, “that the beat makes me miserable.”

>> Time to Raze the Knicks and Start Again By Howard Megdal

The job, under the weight of the regime of Garden chairman James Dolan, has become the most demoralizing reporting gig in the city.

It doesn’t help that the Knicks are such a lousy team: Their 2-9 start, before a recent two-game winning streak, was tied for the worst in franchise history; they haven’t had a winning season in six years; their star player, Stephon Marbury, feuded openly with Mr. Thomas; the team’s off-season was occupied by a sexual harassment lawsuit that led to, among other embarrassing episodes, Mr. Thomas offering his opinion on the difference between a white person and a black person using the word “bitch.”

But that only skims the surface. What really separates the complaints of Knicks writers from those of every other browbeaten city reporter—and reporters are definitely a whiny lot—are their unironic, and apparently accurate, tales of systematic repression.

“It’s the gulag,” said Mike Vaccaro, a columnist for the New York Post.

“We all know what it’s like to cover a normal team,” said Mr. Beck, who previously reported on the Lakers for the L.A. Daily News. “Covering the Knicks is so much worse.”

“Some of the things they practice here are completely against what you’d expect a normal team to do,” said Mr. Hahn, a second-year reporter on the beat who said that he now misses his old job as a hockey reporter covering the provincial New York Islanders. “They come up with things all the time. There’s zero access to players. They would rather you don’t even write.”

The stories from the reporters are endless: layers of institutional paranoia; public relations officials who openly eavesdrop on private conversations with executives and players; the threat—and implementation—of cutting off reporters who are perceived to be critical of the team.

“Everyone is so worried about upsetting Jim Dolan, or getting fired, and as a result people aren’t themselves,” said Mr. Beck. “If you transplanted the same individuals and put them in another city, then they’d be far more interesting. They’d be themselves.”

To their credit, the Knicks’ press officials don’t deny Mr. Dolan’s unusually hands-on role in managing their downtrodden core of reporters.

“I think it’s fair to say that Jim [Dolan] is aware of, and a part of, the shaping of the media policy,” said Barry Watkins, the senior vice president of communications for the Garden.

The policy was instituted in the summer of 2001. (Coincidentally, one supposes, the last year the Knicks had a winning record.)

Two years earlier, Mr. Dolan’s first year as chairman of the Garden, the Knicks made it to the N.B.A. Finals. But partly because of squabbling between head coach Jeff Van Gundy and general manager Ernie Grunfeld that made its way into the press, Mr. Dolan later described that season to reporters as “one of the worst years.”

“I BELIEVE OUR policies work for everybody across the board,” said Mr. Watkins. “If some particular people don’t like or don’t feel good about it, I can’t control what they think.”

Garden policy has meant that before and after every game, there is a media relations official—a minder, really—with a BlackBerry in hand who furiously types away while listening to reporters’ conversations. The notes that the official takes are then e-mailed up the chain of command.

When I spoke with Mr. Isola, the News reporter, on Saturday afternoon on the Garden floor, he pointed to a media relations official watching us. “He’s taking note that I’m talking to you,” he said.

On Monday night before a game against the Jazz, six reporters were speaking with forward Malik Rose. Nick Brown, a public relations official for the Knicks, was recording the proceedings on his BlackBerry, in an e-mail prepared for the Knicks’ head of P.R., Jonathan Supranowitz.

Sometimes Mr. Supranowitz does the monitoring himself.

“I take notes, absolutely,” said Mr. Supranowitz. “A P.R. person must be present for every interview. That’s a Garden policy.”

(Even, apparently, for interviews with other P.R. people: Mr. Supranowitz typed into his BlackBerry while I was speaking with his boss, Mr. Watkins.)

Even if a reporter pitches a fluff piece on a player, it can’t be done alone.

“Once you give a one-on-one interview, they all want one-on-one interviews,” said Mr. Watkins. “Instead of being available all at once, that player or coach has to do separate interviews every day, and that’s just not something we can do. We want to make sure players and coaches and all executives can focus on the task on hand.”

This is not standard practice elsewhere.

“There are very, very successful teams out there that treat the media with dignity and respect and recognize that 90 percent of the time it’s a mutually beneficial relationship,” said David Waldstein, the former Knicks beat reporter for The Star-Ledger. “Every writer who covers the Knicks gets the impression that we are treated as the enemy.”

(Starting this season, The Star-Ledger eliminated the Knicks beat, opting instead to run wire copy.)

“We have three people here tonight,” said Mr. Vaccaro of the New York Post on Monday night. “That’s 16 inches of copy and 16 inches of free space for the Knicks to sell their product, for better or for worse. To make those three stories as difficult as possible to write seems counterproductive to me.”

“[The policy] works against them,” said Mr. Hahn. “It allows for more speculation.”

THE TEAM HAS been willing to create especially hellish conditions for reporters who run afoul of management.

Mr. Isola now looks back wistfully on 2000, a year in which the Knicks were defending Eastern Conference Champions and once again bound for the conference finals. “One time, [former Knicks president] Dave Checketts came out to Vancouver and took the media out on a boat, and it was catered. Walt Clyde Frazier came, and so did all the media people who were traveling. As we were on it, a bald eagle flew right over the ship,” he said, breaking into an enormous smile.

“On the same trip,” he continued, “I went jogging with Barry Watkins from Marina del Rey to Santa Monica, and then back. At night we all hung out together and watched the Final Four.”

The next year, Mr. Isola recalled, Mr. Dolan’s third as the Garden’s chief executive, the Knicks instituted their new media policy. He took a breath. “And now Barry Watkins—I haven’t spoken to him since February.”

Mr. Isola says it’s because he asked Mr. Watkins to stop sending security officials to follow him around the Garden. (Mr. Watkins would not comment on this).

Whatever the cause, Mr. Isola’s excommunication has been complete. The press office doesn’t return his phone calls, and they don’t include him on e-mails, text messages or calls with basic information about games, practices or injuries. Earlier this year, when the Knicks made phone calls to each of the beat reporters to inform them that Isiah Thomas’s contract was being extended, every reporter got a call except for Mr. Isola.

Mr. Watkins declined to discuss specific reasons for the freeze-out. “What I would say,” he said, “is the N.B.A. has certain guidelines—or certain rules, actually, not guidelines, rules—that require us to make practices open and available and make games open and available for all the writers.”

“Frank loves the Knicks,” said Mr. Hahn, the Newsday reporter. “They don’t see that. They think he wants to cause trouble, to get people fired. There are little things like having a security guard follow him. There are people who work there who always make a reference that they can’t talk to him because they say they’ll get fired. It’s a joke, but you know they also mean it because it’s true.”

For working reporters at the Garden, typical meal options include a small plastic cup of coke and a sandwich with ham, processed turkey, swiss cheese and hard white bread, all for $8. When they’re at their floor seats watching the game, they’re given small fuzzy-picture TV’s to watch replays.

It’s a strictly no-frills operation.

“I guess it doesn’t matter what they do to us, the beat guys,” observed Mr. Hahn. “But you’d think they care a little more about presentation when other reporters come to town. They don’t.”

Of course, the reporters shouldn’t be there for the frills. The Knicks should be a good story, even when they’re bad. The spectacular crash-and-burn of a storied franchise, after all, doesn’t lack for narrative tension or drama.

But for the reporters assigned to cover them, there’s something worse about this Knicks team. They’re not so much bad as unbearable.

In a column on Sunday, Mr. Vaccaro wrote: “Take the Jets, who now sit at a relentlessly unremarkable 2-9 after Thursday’s brutalization in Dallas. They do not inspire much of anything within the souls of their fans. They’re just bad. … The Knicks? They inspire something else. They inspire anger. They inspire hatred. … There is an unmitigated loathing for this team, for the men who run the operation. … Knicks fans hate these Knicks. HATE them.”

On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Thomas—by way of appearing to accept responsibility for the ongoing disaster he has orchestrated—acknowledged the journalistic dilemma of having to chronicle the same catastrophe over and over again. “I gotta think that you are tired of writing the same stories that you’ve been writing for the last couple weeks,” he said. “We gotta give you something better to write about, something better to talk about, and a different subject.”

“I’ve been writing the same thing for six years,” said Marc Berman, the Post’s beat reporter since the late 1990’s. “That is so depressing.”

“I don’t know how many times I can use ‘chaos,’ ‘mayhem,’ ‘dysfunction’ to describe this team,” said Mr. Beck. “You feel like a broken record after a while. On a beat like this, you write 250 to 300 stories a year on a team and occasionally you’d like the theme to change a bit. If you’re writing the same theme every day, it’s not satisfying.”

“I’m in shock now,” said Mr. Berman. “The sexual harassment trial was bad enough, and then to have a November like this, when you’re a national joke, for someone covering the team it’s depressing ’cause you want to write positive stuff. Soon the readers aren’t going to care anymore.” His voice got quiet. “In December, who’s gonna read my stories?”

The headline writers seem to have maxed out, too. After a particularly tragic 26-point home loss to the Golden State Warriors last week, the headline for the Times D1 sports story was, “Boo, Boo, Boo, ‘Fire Isiah,’ Boo, Boo, Boo!” On Thanksgiving, Mr. Thomas’ head was transposed onto the body of a golden-brown turkey, with the headline: “Stick a fork in Isiah … HE’S DONE.”

Knicks fans, however, are a resilient bunch. Six of the first seven games this year were sellouts, and in a victory against the first-place Utah Jazz on Nov. 26, they actually stood and cheered at the end.

It was a reminder, however brief, of what it’s like to be in the Garden when things are going well.

After the Nov. 24 win against the Bulls, Mr. Isola sat in the stands with me at the Garden while the Knicks basketball court was in the process of being converted into a hockey rink.

“It’s really sad now,” he said. “There are very few nights where you can feel a buzz in the arena. The thrill is gone.”

He spoke about a colleague, Johnny Ludden, who recently stopped reporting on the Spurs. “He was covering the Spurs for nine years and when he left, ha-ha, they threw him a going-away party,” Mr. Isola said. “I leave the Garden sometimes and think, ‘Should I look under my car before I turn the ignition?’”

“You can get stale on the beat,” he continued. “I shouldn’t be doing it anymore after 12 years. If everything was status quo and if everything was great, I probably would be the wrong guy to h
ave on it. But now I’m the right guy to have on it because they’re trying to screw me over, and by trying to screw me over, it kind of lights a fire in you a little bit. It makes you more motivated to find stuff out and expose what’s going on here.”

I told him it sounded as if he was sticking around out of spite.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“They thought it would be the opposite—they thought they’d beat me down and run me off. I thank them for it.”

But the truly upsetting reality for both the N.B.A. and Knicks fans is that there is no quick fix in sight. The Knicks renaissance, due to the series of short-term moves made by General Manager Isiah Thomas, will be a long time coming.

The only good news, in fact, is that the Knicks are so bad that a true and comprehensive reconstruction of the team is inevitable.

What can be done immediately? Well, a new coach and general manager would be helpful. (Isiah Thomas, inexplicably, fills both roles.) A full rebuild will call for a new leader to plan a coherent collection of talent, rather than Thomas’ unfortunate assemblage of individual scoring talent and weak defense.

Firing Thomas, after the team’s 4-9 start, would not only send a message about management’s tolerance for yet another hideous season. It would also help the team past the ugly chapter leading up to this fall’s sexual harassment judgment against the team, during which Thomas and team owner Jim Dolan conducted themselves classlessly enough for league president David Stern to reprimand the organization publicly.

But even with new leadership, the rebuilding process will take years: It will take until at least 2011 for the damage caused by the compound incompetence of Isiah Thomas and his predecessor, Scott Layden, to disappear.

In 2008, only current backup center Randolph Morris will become a free agent. That frees up $800,000 from the Knicks’ league-high salary of about $90 million. Morris was signed as a project, and he has received just five minutes of playing time all season. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear he can be developed in New York, and the Knicks would be wise to deal him this year for a draft pick. It is unclear what he can become—his upside is quite limited by the remaining roster.

In 2009, all-star-malcontent point guard Stephon Marbury’s $21 million-per-season contract comes to an end. In the N.B.A., where the salary cap is king, a max salary off the books is a tremendous boon to a team hoping to bring in another star. (Conveniently enough, noted Yankees fan LeBron James’ contract is set to expire just a year later.)

Other contracts set to expire in 2009 include Malik Rose’s seven-year, $42 million deal, Fred Jones’ three-year, $11 million package and the low-cost deals of Nate Robinson and David Lee. Of these four players, it is hard to imagine the Knicks keeping any of them besides Lee, whose rebounding and defense make him an underutilized part of every Knicks team he’s played for. In a league filled with GMs dying to add David Lee, it is hard to imagine Thomas’s successor misusing this asset as badly.

The following year provides relief from Jerome James’ five-year, $30 million contract, for which the Knicks have gotten large amounts of fouls and injuries. Forward Quentin Richardson’s six-year, $43 million deal also ends in 2010. The oft-injured Richardson proved once again that taking chances on N.B.A. players with bad backs is not advisable.

Relief from a pair of expensive problems, Eddy Curry and Jamal Crawford, arrives in 2011. While a new coach might be able to convince Curry to play defense and rebound consistently, the career returns so far don’t make that prospect likely. As much as it might pain the Knicks to let Curry go, or trade him as his contract expires, the fact that the team paid entirely too much for a one-dimensional center is not reason enough to hold onto him. Jamal Crawford is similar: One needs consistent shooting from a starting shooting guard no less than one needs consistent rebounding from a starting center. He will make a fine sixth man at a much more affordable rate. Curry’s expiring contract is for six years at $60 million; Crawford’s checks in at seven years, $55.44 million.

And the Knicks will be at liberty to do what they will after 2011 with Jared Jeffries if he doesn’t develop an offensive game, with rookie Wilson Chandler if he doesn’t develop, and with Zach Randolph if, for whatever reason, he’s not part of their new plans.

Somewhat uncharacteristically, the Knicks didn’t trade away their first-round pick in 2008, offering them the opportunity to select in the lottery for the first time since 2005. So that’s something.

Of course, such a top-to-bottom rebuilding process will mean several years of bad, barely watchable basketball. The only question is whether Knicks fans will even notice.