With the first pick in the 2002 NBA Draft, the New York Knicks select?..

The Knicks loss to the Portland Trail Blazers last night officially eliminated them from the 2002 playoff race, securing their first ticket to the NBA lottery since season 1986-87.  Their last lottery pick?  Kenny Walker out of Kentucky.

With two of the NBA?s three largest markets, New York and Chicago, both in the lottery let the talk of the NBA fixing the top three picks begin.  After all, what better way to bring a team back to respectability than by adding a Jason Williams, especially when you team has the second largest payroll in the NBA and will not have any cap relief before 2005-06 at the earliest.

Latrell Sprewell, who predicted a Knicks demise but thought it would come much later in the season, wasn?t around to meet the ending.  He was ejected in the third quarter after an altercation with Blazer Bonzi Wells.

"[Wells] was swinging elbows all night and if he hit me in the face, there would've been a fight right there," said Sprewell.

While the Indiana Pacers could have put an end to the Knicks season much sooner, instead losing a close one to the Atlanta Hawks 95-92, New York could no longer delay the inevitable as they let Portland go through lay up drills in the opening quarter, sealing their fate.

"It's something we've seen for a while now," Sprewell said of elimination. "It would be different if we were right there, right there, and then all of a sudden we didn't make it. It would have hit home a lot more then."

"You can't have 15 games where you're up and you let teams come back and win," he said. "If you only win 10 of them, we're in the eighth spot at least. You just can't do that."

Sprewell has been on both sides of the fence, and to go back to his younger years in the NBA is something that he was hoping would never happen.

"For me, it's something reverting back to my earlier years at Golden State where we were struggling and we knew we weren't getting in," said Sprewell. "After being here three seasons and going to the playoffs, it's more disappointing than weird."

This New York team is a different one to that who played one year ago, with veterans Larry Johnson and Luc Longley both forced to retire through injury.  Johnson in particular has been a huge part of the Knicks past, but would he alone have the ability to avoid this current situation?

"You can't put a price on what Larry brought to this team," he said. "It was leadership, his passion. You knew the guy wanted to win, and he made sure other guys came to play. The things he did on the court probably got taken for granted at times, but the players always knew where his heart was at and what he brought to the table."

With eight games remaining in their season all the organization has to look forward to is May 19 ? the date of the NBA lottery.  At Marc Berman of the New York Post writes things are bound to get much worse for the Knicks before they get better, New York facing a bleak horizon with last night's official elimination possibly being the first of many.

The loss broke the third longest active streak in the NBA today and the 14th longest in NBA history.