The Knicks traded away their best player yesterday when they traded Latrell Sprewell, in the name of getting longer and younger. In return they got a player, Keith Van Horn, who is 6-10 and whose career has been shrinking since he was a rookie with the Nets. Van Horn is now playing for his third team in three years. Sprewell got traded the first time for putting his hands around P.J. Carlesimo's throat.

Now he gets traded out of New York because he doesn't fit the vision that James Dolan and Scott Layden have for the Knicks, whatever that vision happens to be at the moment. The Knicks have no chance to be a real contender again with these people in charge.

Layden, at Dolan's urging, has been trying to get rid of Sprewell for two years. It is finally mission accomplished. You go ahead and buy into this notion that Sprewell doesn't play as hard as he used to, or as fast, that he is slipping now that he is 33. It comes from people who don't watch him nearly enough, or don't know what they're watching in the first place. Whether he's playing out of position or not. Ask the people who still pay these ridiculous prices, who show up night after night and still care about the Knicks, how much they think Sprewell has lost. They know what they are watching, and that is the best two-way ballplayer the Knicks have had in more than 20 years.

Now he is gone to the Timberwolves, the best player in a big deal. Finally the Knicks don't have to play him at small forward. But they were good enough with Sprewell at small forward to make the NBA Finals in 1999.

They would have made it back to the Finals in 2000 if Sprewell and about half the team didn't get hurt against the Pacers in the Eastern Conference finals. He was supposed to be the worst guy in the world when the Knicks made that trade with the Warriors. When he did what he did to Carlesimo, I thought it was one of the worst things I'd ever heard about in sports. Of course that was before everybody in sports started raising the ante, maybe all the way to that hotel room where Kobe Bryant at least forgot how much he loved his wife, and what an inspiration she is to him.

Then he showed up at the Garden, showed them that nobody plays harder than he does. It doesn't change what happened with Carlesimo, or all the times he showed up late, or the way he could blow off the start of training camp when the spirit moved him. It doesn't change that the broken hand he suffered before the start of his last training camp with the Knicks - however he got the broken hand - put the Knicks' season in a ditch before it ever began. All that goes on his permanent record, right underneath what happened that day with Carlesimo. But there was a reason the fans rooted for him harder than they did any of the other Knicks. He wasn't just the best two-way player they'd had since Clyde Frazier.

He was someone to watch.