The solitary figure in the New York Knicks cap looms over his fellow tourists in Little Italy in lower Manhattan like a giant exclamation mark.

Danilo Gallinari, all 6 feet 9 inches of him, lopes past fragrant bakeries and steamy pasta kitchens to the northern reaches of the neighborhood, rebranded Nolita (north of Little Italy) by real estate agents eager to rent space to the boutiques that have made it a fashion destination.

Gallinari, the top draft pick of the Knicks and an Armani model, is the Big Apple's newest and most fashionable Italian immigrant.

"My hometown, Milan, is a lot like New York," says the 20-year-old former star of the Italian club Armani Jeans Milano. "If you don't play hard or play well, the fans boo you."

The best international prospect in the draft—many scouts believe the versatile forward is more gifted than Andrea Bargnani, the No. 1 pick of 2006—was jeered by fans at Madison Square Garden in June when N.B.A. commissioner David Stern announced him as the sixth overall selection.

"I'd be more worried if 'Gallo' were booed at the Garden during the season," says new Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni, who once played pro ball with Gallinari's father, Vittorio, in Milan. "That won't happen because our fans will appreciate his intelligence and work ethic and see his potential."
     
With a team payroll of $99,368,505—highest in the N.B.A. by almost $10 million—it seems oddly fitting that the Knicks have hitched their chariot to a couple of Italians. After all, the recent profligate history of the club roughly parallels the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

After years of larding its roster with overpaid, underachieving players, the franchise once known for "heart and hustle" finished last season 23-59, the second-worst record in the Eastern Conference.
    
The Knicks' seventh consecutive losing campaign was their most humbling and humiliating. Beset by a kind of peevish complacency and abetted by brutish management, they emerged as the most wretched team in NBA history. Over the last decade, no organization in pro sports has been so dysfunctional or embodied failure on such a grand and nearly incomprehensible scale.
    
The Knicks ranked among the league's bottom-feeders in turnovers, field-goal percentage allowed, and points-per-game allowed. Their backcourt of shoot-first guards had the N.B.A.'s third-lowest percentage of assists.

They ranked dead last among 30 teams in blocked shots—rejecting only 3.2 percent of opponents' offerings, a miserable rate that was barely half the league average, and the lowest in the 35-year history of the stat.

More shameful was the harassment case that Madison Square Garden, the Knicks' parent company, settled for $11.5 million. Anucha Browne Sanders, the team's head of marketing, had accused Isiah Thomas, its coach and team president, of verbally abusing and sexually harassing her over a two-year period.

During the often lurid four-week trial, Sanders testified that Thomas, a Hall of Famer and two-time N.B.A. champ who had run the Knicks since 2003, repeatedly insulted her as a "bitch" and a "ho" before suddenly professing his love and demanding "private time" with her.

Sanders alleged that after formally complaining to M.S.G. about Thomas' behavior, she was fired by C.E.O. James Dolan, a bullying lout who claimed she had interfered with the team's internal investigation. A federal jury found for Sanders, and ordered Dolan to pay $3 million for the retaliation. Equally appalling were the sordid revelations about Knicks players. Point guard Stephon Marbury—who'll "earn" about $22 million this season—was forced to admit to a sexual encounter with a 22-year-old intern. Marbury recounted how he had lured the college student into his car after an outing to a strip club with the memorable line: "Are you going to get in the truck."

She answered, "Yes."
    
"It wasn't really a conversation," Marbury said.

The decline of the Knicks began in earnest 10 years ago when then general manager Ernie Grunfeld swapped the sturdy but ancient power forward Charles Oakley to Toronto for young, brittle Marcus Camby. This was the kind of trade the Knicks should have been making to maintain or improve their level of talent while trying to keep the team as young as possible.

But coach Jeff Van Gundy didn't like giving up a veteran like Oakley for the inexperience of Camby.

"That deal played a huge role in Grunfeld ultimately being fired," says N.B.A. writer Ian Thomsen, "and set a new stupid standard for future G.M.'s Scott Layden and Isiah Thomas—to win now or else."  
    
Thomas joined the Knicks in December 2003 following three seasons as coach of the Indiana Pacers, a team he took to the playoffs three times. In New York, he embarked on a frenzy of trading and deal-making that made the Knicks only worse. In N.B.A. parlance, the players he acquired were just good enough to lose with.

 Among Thomas' most questionable moves was the 2005 trade of two first-round draft picks—both of which turned out to be lottery selections—for Eddy Curry, a low-post center whose aversion to defense and rebounding borders on phobia.

Last year Thomas made a bigger splash by swapping for power forward Zach Randolph, another D-challenged shooter vying for space on the low-block. Unfortunately, Curry and Randolph—who will make $9.7 million and $14.7 million, respectively, in 2008-09—"can't co-exist on the same floor," says Knicks broadcaster Mike Breen. "They're deeply defective big men who don't defend."

It's not that Thomas is a poor judge of talent. "Isiah has drafted good players along the way," says Jack McCallum, author of the recent Seven Seconds or Less: My Season on the Bench with the Runnin' and Gunnin' Phoenix Suns.

"But he has the fatal flaw of hubris: 'I can get any bunch of players to play for me. I can rescue anyone's career. Chemistry doesn't matter if I'm the coach.'"

That's how he wound up with the combustible combo of Marbury, Randolph, and Curry.
    
Thomas was just trying to satisfy the deep-pocketed Dolan's impossible-to-satisfy demands, which essentially involved mortgaging and frittering away the long-term future of the franchise in order to win immediately. It's difficult to make prudent decisions when you're under orders to win by throwing excessive money at players in a league with a hard luxury tax.
    
Thomas took over as coach during the summer of 2006. Dolan had fired the near-mythic Larry Brown after a single season with four years and $40 million left on his contract. (Brown settled for $18.5 million). Though the team continued to sputter, Thomas was handed a multiyear contract extension with a caveat: He had one season to show dramatic improvement.

He didn't. "The team would stop opponents for the first 43 minutes and get run over in the last five," observes John Starks, a onetime Knicks guard. "If players fall behind like that continually, it deflates them and the losing mindset becomes habit."
    
The strength of the current team is the perception that at last, Dolan seems ready to turn things around. He hired Donnie Walsh, a proven G.M. who is the anti-Isiah: Not flashy, stays behind the scenes, widely respected. He hired a coach considered a different animal in the N.B.A., a stick-to-his-principles-come-hell-or-high-water fast-break guy. D'Antoni is respected, too, and he'll probably set a world record for clever rejoinders to the New York press.

    
But...the Knicks roster?

There is talent on the team; alas, in the past, the talent wasn't dedicated to a single purpose. Some guys could run and others couldn't. Most liked to score and few liked to pass.
 
Though the Knicks have no franchise player, Walsh and D'Antoni see potential in Nate Robinson ($2 million), Wilson Chandler ($1.2 million), David Lee ($1.8 million), Jamal Crawford ($8.6 million), Quentin Richardson ($8.8 million) and the rehabbing Jared Jeffries ($6 million, broken leg) to adapt to D'Antoni's prolific, high pick-and-roll offense.

"We'll be exciting," predicts assistant coach Herb Williams, a former Knick forward, "and best of all, we’ll be improved."
    
The current mess stemmed largely from the notion that New York fans won't tolerate rebuilding. But the inescapable truth is that no team avoids the downturn cycle of aging. "I've always thought that the Garden fans are sophisticated," says McCallum. "They understand basketball. They understand when a team is trying to get better. They were actually pretty tolerant of Isiah for a long time. Only when it became evident that there was no light, only darkness, did they turn completely against him.

The irony lost on New York's upper management is that the ebb can be the most promising time for a franchise, based on the hope of what young players may yet become. "Most of the time they grow up to disappoint, but you don't know that when they're just starting out and playing hard," Thomsen says. "It's during those rebuilding years that fans can buy naively into the future."
    
Despite their dreadful record, the 2007-08 Knicks played to 92 percent capacity at the Garden. "The only thing that turns fans off is watching unenthusiastic players who aren't trying to compete," insists Williams. To which Breen adds: "Our fans are desperate to see any progress."

They will surely accept steady improvement in the Walsh-D'Antoni era. This season that means finishing close to the playoffs; next season, definitely making the playoffs; and the season after that, finishing among the top four in the East. It's faintly possible for the Knicks to challenge for the playoffs today; several teams could seize one of the bottom-four spots in the conference.

But it won't be easy. The new Knicks have virtually the same gunner-heavy frontcourt and wing rotations—each with similar strengths and weaknesses. D'Antoni inherited lots of forwards, but no genuine power forward or back-up center. And the Knicks' leading shot-blocker, Renaldo Balkman, has been traded. Might the plodding tandem of Curry and Randolph actually mesh with better ball movement? Perhaps, but D'Antoni's breakneck basketball requires quick, smart and talented guards with a feel for the game. Tellingly, Curry and Marbury rode the bench Wednesday night for the entire season opener, a 120-115 victory over the Miami Heat at the Garden.

Part of that problem may be alleviated by the addition of Gallinari (a relative bargain at $2.9 million), assuming, that is, he recovers from the bulging disc that sidelined him for all of training camp and most of the exhibition season. Gallo has a high hoops I.Q. and sound fundamentals, but does he have the speed to defend in the N.B.A. or, for that matter, explode to the basket? "This kid listens and he wants to improve," Crawford says. "He's got confidence by the ton."

Confidence is a funny thing, and often just the lack of tension can provide it. D'Antoni's genius derives, in part, from the perception that he never panics. As it is, the Knicks already draw plenty of tension from the fans, the city, the game itself.
    
To climb back into playoff contention, D'Antoni and Walsh inevitably must offload such deadwood and psychological dead weights as Marbury, Randolph, and Jerome James, the generously proportioned $6.2 million forward aptly named Big Snaxx.

On the other hand, the better they play, the more their value will be enhanced. That would increase the likelihood of trades to make cap room for the 2010 free-agent class of Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and LeBron James, who is rumored to prefer the New York market.

But cap space alone won't lure LeBron; the Knicks must demonstrate that he's the missing piece of their decade-old puzzle, that he'll instantly transform them into a contender. Walsh has the tough job of making the roster better and cheaper—the exact opposite of what the Knicks have been doing since 1998.