"I don't think they played so, so well," Gallinari said.

So his eyes work. That's one place to start.

What did the Knicks get last night? Here is what they didn't get: They didn't get Lew Alcindor or Patrick Ewing or Tim Duncan. It isn't likely that the Bulls, who picked Derrick Rose, got that kind of player, nor did the Heat, who took Michael Beasley. There's no law that every draft yields a franchise player.

This is when the long, hard task of rehabilitating a basketball team hits you like an anvil on the head. The Celtics may have proved that it's possible to go from pariah to parade in 12 months, but the more appropriate lesson should be this: Unless you are privy to the kind of perfect storm that allows Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett dominoes to tumble into each other, you have to go another way.

You have to go a harder way. You have to do what the Knicks must now do, show the discipline to keep Stephon Marbury around until his salary tumbles off the cap, acquire as many expiring contracts as possible, draft a smart stable of role players, and wait for the precise moment to strike the mother lode.

Knowing that the big payoff is still two years and three days away. Knowing that yesterday, the Nets may have scampered well ahead of them in the odd salary-cap dash toward the moment when LeBron James becomes available exactly two years from Monday. Right now, the Nets are committed to only about $30 million of what likely will be a $60 million cap that year. That's a lot of room for a team that already boasts one of James' best friends, Jay-Z, as a minority owner.

And that's a lot of ground for the Knicks to make up between now and then, to say nothing of the two basketball seasons that must still pass before then. But if they are committed to getting this done, committed toward the big picture, then there are some painful days and nights between now and then.

Last night's primal screams being just the first layer of the soundtrack.

"Forza Italia!" Gallinari said. "Forza New York!"

Let's go, Italy. Let's go, New York. Maybe someday, maybe some night, that will have a nice ring to it. Just not this night.