If Scott Layden still had the will to duck into the office Monday, he would have been wise to place his first call to Gregg Popovich in San Antonio.

Not because the Spurs have a spare piece to send to New York that can rescue Layden. The Knicks are beyond help until draft day, given what their GM has to offer in return. Namely, zilch.

	Knicks GM Scott Layden should call Gregg Popovich for a pep talk.

Pop, though, could coach Layden on the merits of patience and especially prayer. He could offer proof that reacting with measured thought to a major injury can pay. For the Knicks and the fallen Antonio McDyess suddenly rest where the Spurs were in 1996-97, when San Antonio had to grit through an unbearably long season minus David Robinson ... before lucking into Tim Duncan in June.

It helps to have some luck, of course. The lottery odds favored Boston landing Duncan in the 1997 draft, but the Ping-Pong balls bounced for Pop after a season in which Robinson played just six games. The Spurs won a championship two years later and have remained an elite team ever since, even as Admiral Dave grows increasingly creaky.

Now it's the Knicks' turn to lose royally, painful as it will be for the league's most demanding audience, and beg for some lotto fortune. LeBron James will be in the '03 draft, and a couple of taller teen-agers -- Darko Milicic (Europe's answer to LeBron James) and Kendrick Perkins (a 7-footer from Texas) -- might join him. At the top of the next draft, there is bound to be at least one prospect who can give the Knicks some hope.

Like, say, Nene Hilario.

New York had the right guy with the No. 7 pick a few months back, but the Knicks moved Hilario, along with others, to Denver for McDyess. Dice is a likeable lad with not such great luck, and Layden gets points here for at least attempting something bold, but that reach for the bones has backfired. Which evaporates the last bit of leniency he should expect in Gotham.

Yes, Layden inherited a horrible salary-cap situation when he joined the Knicks. Yet he has had multiple opportunities to chart a new course, and the solidly built Hilario was the best starting point of them all, coinciding with the Knicks finally missing the playoffs after a 15-year run. The long wait for another Nene-type starts today.

The sole comfort for Knicks watchers is that it finally looks as though rebuilding will be forced on the organization, in spite of management.

Layden will not get close to equal value back if he tries to move Latrell Sprewell, just as Golden State didn't when Spree was dispatched to Manhattan. Layden also can't really cash in on Kurt Thomas' best-ever season, because taking on Thomas would be a PR hit for his next team after a recent domestic arrest.

These restrictions are actually blessings for the true Knicks fan, because now Layden and his bosses must do what they should have been doing already. Tickets for this season are generally already sold, so spare us the futile attempts at triage -- like going after Golden State's Danny Fortson or Portland's Dale Davis.

The Knicks need to bottom out record-wise and find a prospect in the next draft at least as good as Hilario, billed as a South American version of Ben Wallace and already impressing in Denver. Layden must then hope McDyess can find himself after two knee surgeries, just as Grant Hill is trying now after two lost seasons in Orlando because of that blasted ankle. Repairing the relationship with Sprewell, however that happens, is another must. The best scenario of all, naturally, is winding up with James in a modern-day redux of the Patrick Ewing draft.

Cablevision's serious stock trouble likely rules out Layden's imminent dismissal, since hiring a name replacement would undoubtedly be expensive. If Layden nonetheless gets ousted from his office at season's end, Knicks brass has even more cause to restrict any blaze-of-glory trade ideas he might be concocting. They simply can't let the mess get any messier.

There is no fast way to mend the Knicks in their present state. A return to prominence won't happen as fast as it did for the Spurs, because there is no Next Duncan out there and because the other commodity needed in rebuilding (cap room) is likewise a long way off. Still, the San Antonio example is a handy one, if only to convince the Knicks that patience and prayer have worked before.

Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. E-mail him at marc.stein@espn3.com.