According to Chris Broussard, Scott Layden seems unusually excited for a man whose high-profile basketball team missed the playoffs for the first time in 15 years. One would expect trips to China and Italy to be stimulating, but Layden, the Knicks' president and general manager, attributed his enthusiasm to tomorrow's N.B.A. draft lottery.

With a roster full of high-priced, largely immovable players, Layden sees the lottery, to be held in Secaucus, N.J., as the best tool for improving the Knicks.

"This is a hate-love scenario," Layden said yesterday, hours after returning from a scouting trip in Italy. "We hate the way that we got here, by losing games, but right now we love the fact that we have a good pick and we can use that pick to improve the team."

The Knicks will find out where that pick is at halftime of the opening game between the Boston Celtics and the Nets in the Eastern Conference finals. The Knicks, who finished with the seventh-worst record in the league, have a 4.4 percent chance of gaining the No. 1 pick, a 5.05 percent chance of drafting second and a 5.91 percent chance of selecting third. Because of the intricacies of the lottery, they cannot pick fourth, fifth or sixth except through a trade. The lowest they can drop to is 10th.