ELVIS wore a cream colored suit, a shiny blue cap, and a stony expression that everyone inside The Theater at Madison Square Garden could relate to. That roar? That was for every JV hacker who never was quite good enough to make the varsity. It was for the 11th kid in every schoolyard who couldn't get picked for a full-court 5-on-5.

"We want Lampe!" they cried. "We want Lampe!" they yelped. "We want Lampe!" they bellowed.

"Hopefully," Maciej Lampe said, "I'll be able to pay them back someday."

Let's be brutally honest for a second, OK? A few days ago you never heard of Maciej Lampe. You still have no idea if he's ever going to be any good and, really, neither do the Knicks. He is, in the grand old basketball tradition, a "Project," capital "P," a 7-foot question mark.

But for a few minutes inside the Theater last night, a few hundred yards from the Garden show floor where all of this will be judged some day, Maciej Lampe was transformed into an instant basketball folk hero, an urban myth for the urban game, filling the small room with a jolt of electricity that's been missing from the bigger gym next door.

"Good for us," Knicks GM Scott Layden said. "Good for New York."