Knicks making moves with eye toward future

Greenburgh, N.Y. -- Al Harrington looked good in his orange headband as he prepared for his debut with the Knicks against LeBron James, the player many imagine will be laboring on this very practice court in two years.

LeBron James dropped 50 at MSG last season. (Getty Images)

Harrington grew up not far from Madison Square Garden, in Elizabeth, N.J., but admitted after practice Monday at the team's suburban practice facility, "We couldn't afford tickets, so we never went to any games. But I watched them all."

He can afford tickets now, but at least he doesn't have to pay to watch the product the Knicks will put on the floor for the next two seasons, until they get a chance to join about 18 other teams in the courtship of LeBron.

Amazingly, a few unsold tickets remain for LeBron's first visit to the Garden on Tuesday night since he dropped 50 on the Knicks last March. Coincidentally, it's also his first visit since the Knicks traded their two best players just for the chance to sign him when he opts out of his contract in the summer of 2010.

"There will be excitement in the arena," Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni said. "I think the fans are going to see that, yeah, these guys are good. They're solid guys, I've known them a long time, and they know how to play basketball. That's why I think we're going to fool some people."

It was hard to tell if D'Antoni was talking about the team he has or the one he imagines, but the LeBron-in-2010 dynamic has taken on such a life of its own that those are almost one in the same.

One NBA general manager proposed Monday that there are no fewer than 18 teams with enough cap space in 2010 to make a realistic run at LeBron. If I were running the Cleveland Cavaliers, I'd like to see that number grow to 29. While everyone else is stinking on purpose, I could win a couple of championships.

"Look what they're asking New Yorkers to accept," an agent who has represented both coaches and players said. "Look what they're asking people all around the country to accept. 'OK, for two years we're going to stink or just be mediocre.' In what other field would that be tolerated?"

But this is not another field. This is professional sports, where things have to be constantly packaged and repackaged to re-engage the interest of the paying public especially now, when the paying public is running out of means to pay. The Wizards fired Eddie Jordan on Monday, after the Oklahoma City Thunder fired P.J. Carlesimo. Both might very well have deserved it. But are Ed Tapscott and Scott Brooks leading those teams to the playoffs?

No more than Bobby Simmons and Yi Jianlian are leading the Nets there, or Harrington, Tim Thomas, and Cuttino Mobley are leading the Knicks there.

"We're treating it as a one-year deal," D'Antoni said. "And then we'll go to the next year and treat it as a one-year deal."

Which brings us back to the reasons behind the two trades Knicks president Donnie Walsh made last Friday, which seem perfectly sane, if not brilliant, in the alternative universe NBA teams are currently orbiting.

Walsh inherited a team that had endured a decade of shoddy management. The Knicks haven't had cap room to sign a free agent since Ernie Grunfeld lavished riches on Chris Childs and Allan Houston and traded for Larry Johnson in 1996. That worked out pretty well for the Knicks, much better than the malaise and embarrassment that followed.